Computation of Observability Regions for Piecewise Affine Systems: A Projection-Based Algorithm

In this paper we consider the problem of computing sets of observable states for discrete-time, piecewise affine systems. When the maximal set of observable states is full-dimensional, we provide an algorithm for reconstructing it up to a zero measure set. The core of the method is a quantifier elimination procedure that, in view of basic results on piecewise linear algebra, can be performed via the projection of polytopes on subspaces. We also provide a necessary condition on the minimal length of the observability horizon in order to expect a full-dimensional set of observable states. Numerical experiments highlight that the new procedure is considerably faster than the one proposed in (Ferrari-Trecate and Gati, 2004)