In this paper, an adaptive control scheme is proposed for an n-link rigid robot manipulator without using the regressor. The robot is firstly modeled as a set of second-order nonlinear differential equations with the assumption that all of the matrices in that model are unavailable. Since these matrices are time-varying and their variation bounds are not given, traditional adaptive or robust designs do not apply. The function approximation technique (FAT) is used here to represent uncertainties in some finite linear combinations of orthonormal basis. The dynamics of the output tracking can thus be proved to be a stable first order filter driven by function approximation errors. Using the Lyapunov stability theory, a set of update laws is derived to give closed loop stability with proper tracking performance. Experiments are also performed on a 2-D robot to test the efficacy of the proposed scheme.