The wheel slip control systems are able to control the braking force more accurately and can be adapted to different vehicles more easily than conventional ABS (Anti-lock Brake System) systems. In realizing the wheel slip control systems, real-time information such as the tire braking force at each wheel is required. In addition, the optimal target slip values need to be determined depending on the braking objectives such as minimum braking distance and stability enhancement. In this paper, a robust wheel slip controller is developed based on the adaptive sliding mode control method and an optimal target slip assignment algorithm is proposed for maximizing the braking force. An adaptive law is formulated to estimate the braking force in real-time. The wheel slip controller is designed based on the Lyapunov stability theory considering the error bounds in estimating the braking force and the brake disk-pad friction coefficient. The target slip assignment algorithm searches for the optimal target slip value based on the estimated braking force. The performance of the proposed wheel slip control system is verified in HILS (Hardware-In-the-Loop Simulator) experiments and demonstrates the effectiveness of the wheel slip control in various road conditions.