Robotic manipulators are a multi-input multi-output, dynamically coupled, highly time-varying, complex and highly nonlinear systems wherein the external disturbances, parameter variations, and random noise adversely affects the performance of the robotic system. Therefore, in order to deal with such complexities, however, an intriguing task for control researchers, these systems require an efficient and robust controller. In this paper, a novel application of genetic algorithms (GA) optimization approach to optimize the scaling factors of interval type-2 fuzzy proportional derivative plus integral (IT2FPD+I) controllers is proposed for 5-DOF redundant robot manipulator for trajectory tracking task. All five controllers' parameters are optimized simultaneously. Further, a procedure for selecting appropriate initial search space is also demonstrated. In order to make a fair comparison between different controllers, the tuning of each of the controllers' parameters is done with GA. This optimization technique uses the time domain optimal tuning while minimizing the fitness function as the sum of integral of multiplication of time with square error (ITSE) for each joint. To ascertain the effectiveness of IT2FPID controller, it is compared against type-I fuzzy PID (TIFPID) and conventional PID controllers. Furthermore, robustness testing of developed IT2FPID controller for external disturbances, parameter variations, and random noise rejection is also investigated. Finally, the experimental study leads us to claim that our proposed controller can not only assure best trajectory tracking in joint and Cartesian space, but also improves the robustness of the systems for external disturbances, parameter variations, and random noise. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.