Abstract In this talk, we introduce a new and novel strategy for trajectory control of continuum robot sections. The approach is based on a virtual discrete-jointed robot whose degrees of freedom are directly mapped to those of a continuum robot section. A conventional control strategy is developed for the virtual robot, for which inverse kinematics and dynamic equations are formulated and exploited, with appropriate transformations developed for implementation on the continuum robot. The control algorithm was implemented on a three degree of freedom section of the OctArm continuum manipulator, with decent tracking performance (steady state tracking error of merely 3mm during extension).