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The article discusses papers published in the special section of "IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control" which focuses on symbolic methods for complex control systems in the June 2006 issue. Two papers which focuses on the study of the problem of control using strings of symbolic control languages, maneuver automata, or control quanta are presented. Another study conducted by Paulo Tabuada examines the problem of producing finite models of continuous systems, by constructing models that contain only a finite number of the possible trajectories.

This paper describes an approach to the control of continuous systems through the use of symbolic models describing the system behavior only at a finite number of points in the state space. These symbolic models can be seen as abstract representations of the continuous dynamics enabling the use of algorithmic controller design methods. We identify a class of linear control systems for which the loss of information incurred by working with symbolic subsystems can be compensated by feedback. We also show how to transform symbolic controllers designed for a symbolic subsystem mb controllers for the original system. The resulting controllers combine symbolic controller dynamics with continuous feedback control laws and can thus be seen as hybrid systems. Furthermore, if the symbolic controller already accounts for software/hardware requirements, the hybrid controller is guaranteed to enforce the desired specifications by construction thereby reducing the need for formal verification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]