This paper presents a modified disturbance observer (MDOB) for controlling two arms of a manipulator designed for a home service robot. The MDOB is slightly different from the original DOB in that it uses an accelerometer to measure acceleration of the robot arm. Then it uses the acceleration to estimate the disturbance to cancel out in the control loop. Relying on the acceleration information of the robot arm, a partial model-based control structure is formed. Experimental studies of position control of 2 DOF robot arm are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed position control by an MDOB method.