Reachable sets and controllability of bilinear time-invariant systems: a qualitative approach

This paper is concerned with a qualitative method for the study of reachable sets and controllability of bilinear time-invariant systems. A nonlinear decomposition technique which reduces the solution of the problem to the analysis of the qualitative behavior of a finite number of linear uncontrolled systems is introduced. Special consideration is given to the homogeneous bilinear systems with commutative matrices. Two- and three-dimensional examples are discussed.