Patent ID: 7546169

Claim:
A control apparatus comprising: an identification means for using a plant model expressing an object to be controlled by a discrete mathematical model and for identifying parameters of the plant model so as to bring an identification error, which is an error between a plant model output of an output when an input to the object to be controlled is applied to the plant model and an actual output of the object to be controlled, close to zero, and the identification means is constructed so as to discretize the plant model as a form of including information of part of time delay of the object to be controlled in model parameters; a time delay estimating means for estimating time delay so as to bring time delay close to actual time delay of the object to be controlled on the basis of a change in the information of part of time delay included in the discrete model parameters; and a control input computing means for computing an input to the object to be controlled so that an actual output of the object to be controlled becomes a specified target value, wherein the computing by the control input computing means is performed on the basis of time delay estimated by the time delay estimating means; wherein the object to be controlled is an engine or a component of the engine.