Fuzzy Sliding Mode Control for logitudinal motion of underground mining electric vehicles

Cost and safety are always the most important factors for personnel transport and mining vehicles in mining industry. That is why the development of underground mining electrical vehicles (UMEVs) becomes more and more attractive in undergrounds mines. However, a stable, reliable and robust controller for the UMEV is also a critical condition due to the safety requirements. Sliding Mode Control (SMC) is able to deal with system uncertainties and external disturbances, but it cannot achieve smooth performance during the transition between different subspaces in the state space. This paper first presents the modeling of an UMEV for acceleration, braking and speed maintenance, and a global fuzzy model will be developed based on that. Then, a Fuzzy Sliding Mode Controller (FSMC) of the UMEV will be proposed. The comparison of the simulation results for both the proposed FSMC controller and an SMC controller shows that the proposed FSMC controller has a better performance when the system switches in different subspaces in the state space.