A singlelink translational flexible manipulator was investaged as an object. Aimed at the problem of due to the flexible manipulators presented easily vibrations in the movement process, the positioning accuracy of it was significantly influenced, based on multipopulation genetic algorithm, a control scheme of propotion, integration and differential (PID) parameters optimization was proposed.According to assumption modal method and Hamilon principle, the dynamic model of the translational flexible manipulator was constructed.The integral of the error between the desired and actual feedback trajectory of flexible manipulator tip was regarded as the performance indicators and the multipopulation genetic algorithm was used to implement the automatic optimization of PID control parameters.In order to verify the validity of the optimized parameters, a union simulation experiment was performed by importing the physical model of the flexible manipulator which was constructed in ADAMS into the Simulink software. The results show that the proposed method of parameter automatic optimization is effective, which can evidently improve the stability and rapidity of the standard genetic algorithm. Besides, the residual vibrations of flexible manipulator are well suppressed, and the purpose of accurate positioning is achieved.