This paper is concerned with the position control of the ond degree-of freedom manipulator using pneumatic artificial muscle actuator which is built to have a proper compliance. For t his pneumatic artificial muscle actuator though, it is difficult to make an effective control scheme due to the nonlinearity and uncertainties on the dynamics of the actuator. In this paper, a third-order equation of motion is derived for the actuator including the dynamics of the pneumatic servovalve. Later, various modeling uncertainties due to the nonlinearity and unmodeled dynamics of the servo vlave and the actuator are taken care of, as a trade-off between the closed-loop performance of the controlled system and its robustness to uncertainties. A controller using .mu. synthesis thchnique is designed, and robust performance against measurement noise, various modeling uncertainties due to the dynamics of the servo valve and actuator is achieved. The effectiveness of the proposed control methods is illustrated through simulations and experiments.