This paper investigates the performance evaluation of two state feedback controllers, Pole Placement (PP) and Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR). The two controllers are designed for a Mass-Spring-Damper (MSD) system found in numerous applications to stabilize the MSD system performance and minimize the position tracking error of the system output. The state space model of the MSD system is first developed. Then, two meta-heuristic optimizations, Simulated Annealing (SA) optimization and Ant Colony (AC) optimization are utilized to optimize feedback gains matrix K of the PP and the weighting matrices Q and R of the LQR to make the MSD system reach stabilization and reduce the oscillation of the response. The Matlab software has been used for simulations and performance analysis. The results show the superiority of the state feedback based on the LQR controller in improving the system stability, reducing settling time, and reducing maximum overshoot. Furthermore, AC optimization shows significant advantages for optimizing the parameters of PP and LQR and reducing the fitness value in comparison with SA optimization
