Obstacle avoidance of underactuated robot manipulators using switching computed torque method (SCTM) is presented. One fundamental feature of this novel method is to use partly stable controllers (PSCs) in order to fulfill the ultimate control objective. Here, we use genetic algorithms (GAs) to acquire the optimum switching sequence of the control actions for a given time frame with the available set of elemental controllers, depending on which links/variables are controlled. The effectiveness of the concept is illustrated by taking a three-degrees-of-freedom (DOF) manipulator and showing enhanced performance of the proposed control methodology.