A sliding mode throttle controller for drive-by-wire operation of a racing motorcycle engine

In this paper, the problem of designing a drive-by-wire throttle control system for a high performance motorcycle engine is considered. Given the characteristics of the electro-mechanical system to be controlled, an observer-based, discrete-time sliding mode (DTSM) servo controller with integral action is adopted. The controller is designed on the basis of an identified model of the system, whose states are estimated by means of a state observer. Different state observer structures are analysed, and it is shown that the main characteristics of standard state-feedback based sliding mode control systems are preserved. A theoretical analysis is also presented showing that a separation principle holds, so that the state observer and the DTSM controller can be designed independently. The performances of the designed controller of robustness against large variations of the system parameter both an experimental setup and a racing motorcycle