The autonomous distributed control (ADC) is one of the most attractive approaches for more versatile and autonomous robot systems. This paper proposes a parallel and distributed trajectory generation method for redundant manipulators through cooperative and competitive interactions among subsystems composing the ADC that is based on a concept of virtual arms. The virtual arm has the same kinematic structure as the manipulator except that its end-point is located on a joint or link of the manipulator. Then the redundant manipulator can be represented by a set of the virtual arms. In this paper, trajectory generation and point-to-point control of the redundant manipulator are discussed, and it is shown that the kinematic redundancy of the manipulator can be utilized positively in the generated trajectories by using the virtual arms. © 1997 IEEE.