<p>Force or torque control should ensure that a manipulator exerts a predefined force on its environment. Commonly a dedicated sensor is used to measure this interaction force. In this paper it is shown that such additional sensor is not needed in a compliant manipulator with flexure joints, taking advantage of the system’s deterministic behaviour. For a 2-DOF manipulator a multibody model is derived of which the physical parameters have been experimentally identified. Using this model, the interaction force is estimated in real-time from the actuator forces and knowing the manipulator motion. This force estimation is embedded quite straightforwardly in a force control system to apply a specified force on the environment while the end-effector can move in both directions. In this way it is demonstrated that the proposed model-based force estimation is sufficiently accurate and it enables a viable concept to implement real-time force control for compliant manipulator with flexure joints without the need of an additional sensor.</p>