By using the function approximation technique (FAT), the adaptive control of rigid‐link electrically‐driven(RLED) robots is addressed in the presence of time‐varying uncertain parameters. Unlike the conventional adaptive control of robot manipulators, the regressor matrix does not need to be calculated in the proposed controller. Rigorous proof of the closed‐loop stability and the convergence of the output tracking error are derived by using Lyapunov‐like theory. Simulation studies are given to illustrate the tracking performance with the proposed control schemes.