AbstractA dynamic model of the human arterial vascular system has been developed to establish a physiologically oriented mathematical description of the vascular system dynamics for the design and parameter-adaptation of entirely artificial heart controllers. To allow an on-line estimation of the model state-space parameters by pressure-measurements of the arterial system, a recursive nonlinear filter algorithm has been used and was tested with simulated data first. The algorithm was then applied to measurements taken in experiments with calves In order to estimate arterial compliance-parameters. Reliable on-line identifiability of the model parameters was achieved with the help of simulated and measured pressure-data with standard deviations of the parameters of less than 6%, resulting In a good congruence between measured and model-predicted data.