A new type controller, BP neural-networks-based sliding mode controller is developed for a class of large-scale nonlinear systems with unknown bounds of high-order interconnections in this paper. It is shown that decentralized BP neural networks are used to adaptively learn the uncertainty bounds of interconnected subsystems in the Lyapunov sense, and the outputs of the decentralized BP neural networks are then used as the parameters of the sliding mode controller to compensate for the effects of subsystems uncertainties. Using this scheme, not only strong robustness with respect to uncertainty dynamics and nonlinearities can be obtained, but also the output tracking error between the actual output of each subsystem and the corresponding desired reference output can asymptotically converge to zero. A simulation example is presented to support the validity of the proposed BP neural-networks-based sliding mode controller.
