Sliding mode control is a particular type of variable structure control that has attractive robustness properties. The price paid for these attractive properties is the discontinuous nature of the control law, which leads to chattering effects and makes it difficult to implement. Heuristic methods such as boundary layer techniques or continuous approximations to the signum function have been proposed to alleviate this difficulty, as well as higher order sliding modes. This project is concerned with the development of design tools for fixed-order or fixed-structure sliding mode controllers that facilitate a trade-off between the fundamental robustness properties and the ease of implementation.