In order to improve the performance of the Bearingless Induction Motor (BIM) under large disturbances (such as parameter variations and load disturbances), an adaptive variable-rated sliding mode controller (ASMC) is designed to obtain better performance of the speed regulation system. Firstly, the L 1 norm of state variables is applied to the conventional exponential reaching law and an adaptive variable-rated exponential reaching law is proposed to reduce system chattering and improve bad convergence performance of the sliding mode variable structure. Secondly, an integral sliding-mode hyper plane is produced according to the speed error in speed regulation system of BIM. Current signal is extracted by the combination of the sliding-mode hyper plane, the electromagnetic torque and the equation of motion. Finally, the feedback speed can adjust operating state adaptively according to speed error and make system chattering-free moving. The simulation and experiment results show that the proposed ASMC can not only enhance the robustness of the system’s uncertainties, but also improve the dynamic performance and suppress system chattering.