A new class of adaptive nonlinear H_∞ control for robotic manipulators is proposed in this manuscript. Those control strategies are derived as solutions of particular nonlinear H_∞ control problems, where both disturbances and estimation errors of unknown system parameters are regarded as exogenous disturbances to the processes, and the L₂ gains from those uncertainties to generalized outputs are prescribed explicitly. The resulting adaptive control systems are shown to be robust to the estimation errors in the adaptation schemes.