Up to now, most robot control systems are very naive. They consist of a number of independent position-servo loops to control each joint angle separately. Those control systems have constant predefined gains and do not cover the complex dynamic interactions between manipulator joints. As a result, the manipulator is severely limited in range of application, speed of operation and variation of payload. This study proposed a new method to design a robot manipulator controller capable of tracking the reference trajectories of joint angles in a reasonable accuracy to cope with actual situations of varying payload, uncertain parameters. The adaptive model following control method has been used to improve existing robot manipulator controllers. The proposed controller is operated by adjusting its gains based on the response of the manipulator in such a way that the manipulator closely matches the reference model trajectories defined by the designer. The stability of adaptive controller is based on the Second Method of Lyapunov. The coupling among joints and the nonlinearity in the dynamic equation are explicitly considered. The designed manipulator controller shows good tracking performance under various load varia- tion and parameter uncertainties.