Patent ID: 8478507

Claim:
A control device for operating one or more actuators to control an operation of an internal combustion engine, the control device comprising: a plurality of different sensors that acquire a plurality of different status amounts indicative of the status of the internal combustion engine (hereinafter referred to as the engine status amounts); and a computation element that computes an actuator operation amount from the engine status amounts, the computation element using a model during a process of the computation; wherein the model includes a plurality of submodels arranged in a hierarchical sequence; wherein, when parameters are calculated by two consecutive submodels arranged in the hierarchical sequence, there is a means-end relation between a parameter calculated by a lower-level submodel and a parameter calculated by a higher-level submodel; wherein the highest level submodel calculates a parameter that is a numerical value representing a request concerning the performance of the internal combustion engine, and is built so as to calculate the parameter by using the engine status amounts; wherein submodels other than the highest level submodel are built so that when an immediately higher-level submodel is used, a parameter calculated by the higher-level submodel is handled as a target value to calculate a parameter for achieving the target value from the engine status amounts, and that when the immediately higher-level submodel is not used, the parameter is calculated from the engine status amounts only; and wherein the computation element computes the actuator operation amount by using a parameter calculated by the lowest level submodel and changes the number of higher-level submodels to be used in combination with the lowest level submodel in accordance with the operation status of the internal combustion engine.