LAUSR

Within the theoretical and practical developments of theories of systems identification, control design, and observations, the use of the sliding mode concept has attracted increasing attention due to its potential in dealing with, for example, uncertainties, nonlinearities, and unknown inputs. Specifically, sliding mode observers have been studied in terms of convergences, robustness, and accuracy of the obtained results through various types of sliding modes in system theory. However, the analysis and design of sliding mode observers pose new challenges due to system complexities in modeling, performance objectives, computational issues, and so on. In the past decades, although some fundamental aspects have been studied within the sliding mode context, there are several open issues that need to be addressed, such as the sliding mode observer (SMO) for nonlinear systems, SMO for descriptor systems, SMO for switched systems, SMO based uncertainties compensation, SMO based parameter identification, SMO based fault detection, and SMO based fault tolerant control with applications. Unlike a number of well‐established journals in the area of systems theory, the primary objective of this special issue of the Asian Journal of Control is to bring together the latest approaches to understanding, analyzing, and implementing sliding mode theory developments in observation, identification, uncertainties compensation, and fault detection of dynamical systems. Consistent with this focus the special issue has accepted, after rigorous peer‐review, 38 high‐quality papers out of a large number of submissions, the contents of which are briefly summarized according to the following three categories. The first set of accepted papers covers recent results on sliding mode observer designs for a different class of nonlinear systems in the presence of, for instance, model uncertainties, jumping parameters, and unknown input, where time delays are taken into account in SMO designs.