A design strategy for discrete control of continuous systems

We consider the problem of controlling a continuous plant using only discrete-state information provided, for example, by level sensors for the various state variables of the plant and acting on a finite number of discrete inputs (switches). Given two regions in the state space the paper proposes a method to determine a control strategy that is guaranteed to transfer the state of the plant from one region to the other. The method is essentially based on the continuous model of the plant. The method is illustrated with an example.