ε-Insensitizing controls for pointwise observations of the heat equation

Abstract In this paper, we study the e -insensitizing controllability for the functional given by integrating in time the square of the solution of the heat equation in a finite number of points of the domain Ω⊂ R N , i.e., when the observation set is reduced to a finite set of points. We reduce the controllability problem to a unique continuation property for a cascade system of linear heat equations and we obtain a positive result in the case N ⩽3.