This paper concerns the modeling and control of a pneumatic artificial muscle applied to robotic manipulators. It is important to structure the static model by using the principle of virtual works considering the dissipated energy which consists of the frictional loss and the elastic loss in the modeling of a pneumatic artificial muscle. A special attention is directed to the modeling of an antagnostic drive unit as the actuator for robotic manipulators. A new design method is proposed for the manipulator control system incorporated with an antagnostic drive unit by introducing its inverse model derived. The basis of the present design method is a sophisticated application of the compensation method for two-stage control by linearization and servo compensation. Feasibility of the proposed method has been examined both through simulation and the 2-DOF control experiment using a 2-link horizontal manipulator. It has resulted in success to indicate the promising aspect of the proposed design method for control system using a pneumatic artificial muscle.