Abstract
It is not desirable for the control of water status of a plant, to overshoot the desired value because fruit cracking is caused by too much watering. In this report, optimal control of water status of a plant was studied with an optimal regulator. A plant response model was identified by least squares method. An optimal regulator was used to control the water status of the plant, and a Kalman filter was used to estimate state variables. The covariance of the Kalman filter was determined by simulation. Feedback gain was also determined by varying the weight matrices in the simulation. In the experiment, the ratio of the weight matrices were varied between 0.1 to 10.0. The optimal control experiment showed good agreement with the simulation, and it showed good results for control of water status of plants.
