Increased demands for higher productivity and improved quality of goods have required industrial robots to operate at high speed with greater precision. To meet these demands, robots should be lightweight, quick, and accurate. In this study these requirements are satisfied by inclusion of structural flexibility in the dynamic model of the robotic manipulator and implementation of advanced composite materials in the structural design. The focus of this study is a three-dimensional, revolute, compositematerial robot arm. A displacement finite element dynamic model is employed which includes all the coupling terms between the rigid and flexible motions and takes into consideration the axial, in-plane, and out-of-plane transverse deflections. The material damping of the laminated flexible link in both transverse directions is considered. The digital simulation results clearly demonstrate the advantage of incorporating advanced composite materials in the structural design of robotic manipulators. The effect of flexible motion on the rigid body motion is proven to be very important. It is also shown that there is a significant difference between the behavior of the geometrically linear and nonlinear models. Effects of fiber orientation and material orthotropy on the bending stress and displacements are also assessed. It is demonstrated that the inclusion of material damping in the dynamic model is an important factor in the design of flexible robot arms made of advanced composite materials.