A compact, lightweight manipulation system that excels in operability and has a force feedback capability is provided. When automatic operation of a slave manipulator 105 that follows manual operation of a master manipulator 101 is bilaterally controlled by means of communication, the force acting on the slave manipulator is fed back to the master manipulator by operating the master manipulator primarily under electrically-driven speed control and the slave manipulator primarily under pneumatically-driven force control. Therefore, in the master manipulator, it is not necessary to compensate for the dynamics and the self-weight of the master manipulator in the motion range of a user, allowing highly accurate, broadband positional control, which is specific to an electrically-driven system, and in the slave manipulator, nonlinearity characteristics specific to a pneumatically-driven system presents passive softness, provides a high mass-to-output ratio, and produces a large force.
