Patent 10012167 was granted and assigned to Denso on July, 2018 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An ECU loads detected values of a rotation angle sensor and a pressure sensor which are mounted to an electric throttle, and executes an abnormal-sensor determination control to determine whether one of the rotation angle sensor and the pressure sensor is abnormal. Specifically, the ECU determines that one of the rotation angle sensor and the pressure sensor is abnormal, in a case where a state that a tendency of the actual opening angle detected by the rotation angle sensor does not match a tendency of the pressure detected by the downstream pressure sensor has continued for a period greater than or equal to a predetermined period. Therefore, since the pressure sensor can replace the rotation angle sensor used for detecting abnormality in a conventional technology, two rotation angle sensors can be reduced to one rotation angle sensor, and a cost is reduced.