The efficient vibration control of complex multibody systems is an important issue in engineering design and has drawn substantial attention in the field of multibody system dynamics and control engineering. In this paper, by combining the transfer matrix method for multibody systems and modal space control, an active vibration control design method is presented for the dynamic modeling and vibration control design of multibody systems. The state-space equations in terms of generalized coordinates in modal space can be obtained easily. Based on the independent modal space control method, a robust independent modal space controller is presented for active vibration control of general linear multibody systems. The proposed method has low memory requirements, high computational efficiency, and additional advantages for dynamic design and real-time control of general multibody systems. A numerical simulation example of vibration control of a multiple-launch rocket system is given, validating the method and the control performance. (C) 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.