Recently, since robot manipulator becomes faster and lighter, its link is no longer regarded as rigid body, and robot controller which only controls robot position cannot reduce vibration of the flexible link. Therefore vibration control is needed in robot manipulator control in addition to position control. In the case that tip mass changes when robot manipulator in working, it is clear that the efficiency of the vibration/position controller designed for the fixed system goes down. In this paper, the system with time varying parameters, adaptive control theory is adopted which estimates parameters changed by the variation of the tip mass and re-calculates the gain of the controller. Validify of the proposed adaptive controller and capability of the estimator are evaluated by computer simulations and experiments. Comparison results of the optimal controller for the fixed system and proposed adaptive controller and carried out.