GEOMETRICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF OBSERVABILITY IN SWITCHED LINEAR SYSTEMS

Abstract This paper is concerned with the observability of a class of hybrid systems, namely Switched Linear Systems (SLS), where the continuous part is represented by a family ℱ of Linear Systems (LS) and the discrete part is represented by an Interpreted Petri Net (IPN). Three main contributions are presented in this paper. The first one is the characterization of observability of SLS based on the possible system trajectories. The second contribution is the determination of sufficient structural conditions to determine when a SLS is observable. Thus, this characterization leads to efficient algorithms to test the observability in SLS. Finally, the third contribution is the design of an observer for both, the continuous and discrete state.