In this paper, an automobile clutch plate test system is designed. According to the big disturbance torque and high requirement of control accuracy, a compound sliding mode controller is proposed to control the system based on Kalman filter. The simulation shows that compared with the compound PID, this algorithm has high steady accuracy, tracking accuracy and a fast response speed, and the controller with the Kalman filter can eliminate the random noise and the industrial frequency disturbance. The measurement results show that the accuracy and efficiency have been improved and the test system is working stably and credibly. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Hainan University.