Hybrid zonotopes: a new set representation for reachability analysis of mixed logical dynamical systems

This article presents a new set representation named the hybrid zonotope that is equivalent to the union of 2N constrained zonotopes -- convex polytopes -- through the addition of N binary zonotope factors. The major contribution of this manuscript is a closed-form solution for exact forward reachable sets of discrete-time, linear hybrid systems modeled as mixed logical dynamical systems. The proposed approach captures the worst-case exponential growth in the number of convex sets required to represent the nonconvex reachable set while exhibiting only linear growth in the complexity of the hybrid zonotope set representation. Redundancy removal techniques are provided that leverage binary trees to store the combinations of binary factors of the hybrid zonotope that map to nonempty convex subsets. Numerical examples show the hybrid zonotope's ability to compactly represent nonconvex reachable sets with an exponential number of features. Furthermore, the hybrid zonotope is shown to be closed under linear mappings, Minkowski sums, generalized intersections, and halfspace intersections.