An adaptive output feedback controller is designed for tracking control of an n-link robot manipulator with unknown load. High-gain obwserver that is used to estimate joint velocities is designed to avoide the restriction of the allowable variation range of unknown parmeters as well as improve the state estimation error. We saturate the control inut outside a domain of interest and use an adaptive law with a parameter projection feature to guarantee boundedness of all the trajectories in the closed-loop system. Simulation resutls on a 2-link manipulator illustrate that when the speed of the high-gain observer is sufficiently high, the proposed controller recovers the performance under state feedback control.