On Finding the Closest Zonotope to a Polytope in Hausdorff Distance

We provide a local theory for the optimization of the Hausdorff distance between a polytope and a zonotope. To do this, we compute explicit local formulae for the Hausdorff function $d(P,-):Z_n\to \mathbb{R}$, where $P$ is a fixed polytope and $Z_n$ is the space of rank $n$ zonotopes. This local theory is then used to provide an optimization algorithm based on subgradient descent that converges to critical points of $d(P,-)$. We also express the condition of being at a local minimum as a polyhedral feasibility condition.