Position control of servo motor systems is a challenging task because of inevitable factors such as uncertainties, nonlinearities, parametric variations, and external perturbations. In this article, to alleviate the above issues, a practical adaptive fast terminal sliding mode control (PAFTSMC) is proposed for better tracking performance of the servo motor system by using a state observer and bidirectional adaptive law. First, a smooth-tangent-hyperbolic-function-based practical fast terminal sliding mode control (PFTSM) surface is designed to ensure not only fast finite time tracking error convergence but also chattering reduction. Second, the PAFTSMC is proposed for the servo motor, in which a two-way adaptive law is designed to further suppress the chattering and overestimation problems. More importantly, the proposed adaptive technique can update the switching gain according to the system uncertainties, which can provide high gain in the reaching phase and then decrease to the smallest value in the sliding phase to avoid the monotonically increasing gain that exists in most adaptation methods. Third, the finite-time stability of the closed-loop system is proved based on the Lyapunov theorem. Finally, the simulation studies and experimental tests verify the effectiveness of the proposed control in terms of better tracking, strong robustness, and reduced chattering, compared to existing algorithms.
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