The equations of state evolution of a hybrid system are nonlinear and
generate non-Gaussian sample paths. For this reason, the optimal, mean
-square estimate of the state is difficult to determine. in an earlier
paper (Ref. 1), a useful approximation to the optimal estimator was d
erived for the case where there is a direct, albeit noisy, measurement
of the modal state. Although this algorithm has proven serviceable, i
t is restricted to applications in which the base-state path is contin
uous. in this paper, the result is extended to the case in which there
are base-state discontinuities of a particular sort. The algorithm is
tested on a target tracking problem and is shown to be superior to bo
th the extended Kalman filter and the estimator derived in Ref. 1.