Sliding mode control of a ball balancing robot

This paper presents a sliding mode control design for a ball-balancing robot (ballbot), with associated real-time results. The sliding mode control is designed based on the linearized plant model, and is robust to matched uncertainties. The design is considerably simpler than other nonlinear control strategies presented in the literature, and the experimental results for stabilization and tracking show much better performances than those obtained with linear control (in particular, a linear quadratic regulator).