The hybrid joints can be switched to either active (actuated) or passive (under-actuated) mode as needed (Li, Ming, Xi, & Shimojo, 2006), in this paper, dynamic coupling switching control incorporating Support Vector Machines (SVMs) is developed for wheeled mobile manipulators with hybrid joints. The hybrid actuated robot dynamics is a mixed under-actuated and actuated model. In order to approximate the high dimension unmodelled dynamics, the SVMs matrix and its operator are proposed. Considering the joint switching as an event, the event driven switching control strategy is used to ensure that the system outputs track the given bounded reference signals within a small neighborhood of zero, and guarantee semi-global uniform boundedness of all closed loop signals, and the switch stability. The effectiveness of the proposed controls is verified through extensive simulations. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.