This paper presents a study of the application of adaptive and robust control methods to a cooperative manipulation system which is developed for handling an object by three dimensional revolute-jointed manipulators. The adaptive control algorithm supports the parameter adaptive law that provides guaranteed stability for uncertain systems. In designing the robust control structure, contact and friction constraints for grasp and bearing conditions, structural flexibility or such similar factors as various unmodeled dynamics are considered as uncertainties that determine available values of control parameters. The novelty of results in the present paper is to define new control inputs using parametric uncertainties and the Lyapunov based theory of guaranteed stability of uncertain systems for handling objects in a spatial workspace.