The Curious Case of Integrator Reach Sets, Part I: Basic Theory

Abstract: This is the first of a two part paper investigating the geometry of the integrator reach sets, and the applications thereof. In this Part I, assuming box-valued input uncertainties, we establish that this compact convex reach set is semialgebraic, translated zonoid, and not a spectrahedron. We derive the parametric as well as the implicit representation of the boundary of this reach set. We also deduce the closed form formula for the volume and diameter of this set, and discuss their scaling with state dimension and time. We point out that these results may be utilized in benchmarking the performance of the reach set over-approximation algorithms.