Synchronization of mechanical horizontal platform systems in finite time

The horizontal platform system (HPS) is a mechanical device that exhibits rich and chaotic dynamics. In this paper, the problem of finite-time synchronization of two non-autonomous chaotic HPSs is investigated. It is assumed that both drive and response systems are disturbed by model uncertainties, external disturbances and fully unknown parameters. Appropriate update laws are proposed to undertake the unknown parameters. Using the update laws and finite-time control theory, a robust adaptive controller is derived to synchronize the two uncertain HPSs in a given finite time. Subsequently, the effects of input nonlinearities are taken into account and a robust adaptive controller is introduced to synchronize the two uncertain HPSs within a finite time. The finite-time stability and convergence of the proposed schemes are analytically proved. Two illustrative examples are presented to show the robustness and applicability of the proposed adaptive finite-time control techniques.