Trajectory tracking is an essential requirement in robot manipulator movement and localization applications. It is a current research topic of interest, and several researchers have proposed different schemes to achieve the task accurately. This research proposes efficient control of a hydraulic non-linear robot manipulator using a modified sliding mode control, named proportional derivative sliding mode control with sliding perturbation observer (PDSMCSPO), to overcome parameter uncertainties and non-linearity. The proposed new control strategy achieves higher accuracy and better time convergence than the previous one. A positive derivative gain, which has a value less than one, is multiplied with the velocity error term of the sliding surface. The proposed control (PDSMCSPO) also achieves robustness. Results show that by introducing the derivative gain, the chattering from the system has been reduced more than classical sliding mode control (SMC). The reason is that during reaching phase this small gain multiplies with the perturbation and minimizes the effect of perturbation on the system. A smaller value of switching gain K is required as compared to SMC, and the transfer function between sliding surface and perturbation in proportional derivative sliding mode control (PDSMC)has low pass filter characteristics. The proposed PDSMCSPO has a faster response than previous sliding mode control with sliding perturbation observer (SMCSPO), and the output and sliding surface convergence to the desired value is much quicker than conventional logic. Some other characteristics such as error in the output are small because of more attenuation of the perturbation signal. Simulation and experimental results are presented for a link between the hydraulic robot manipulator and the mass damper system.