The pointing testbed is an experimental apparatus which can be used to examine the effects of nonlinearities, such as backlash and Coulomb friction, on the control performance. In this paper, a fuzzy controller is proposed to carry out high accuracy and fast positioning of the testbed. A refemce model is utilized to obtain a smooth transient response and avoid undesirable overshoots. Through off-line simulation and on-line real-time implementation and test, the fuzzy controller is found to be capable of achieving an extremely high accuracy, a fast response and a good robustness against backlash and Coulomb friction.