The aim of this paper is to design a neural network based adaptive control scheme for redundant manipulators in the presence of model uncertainties and external disturbances together with multiple self-motion criteria. With reference to the paper (N. Kumar, V. Panwar, N. Sukavanam, S.P. Sharma, J.H. Borm, Neural network based nonlinear tracking control of kinematically redundant robot manipulators, Mathematical and Computer Modelling 53 (2011) 1889–1901), an adaptive mechanism is also developed to estimate the uncertain bound of external disturbances and neural network approximation error etc. without requirement of known bounds. By Lyapunov method asymptotic error convergence can be guaranteed for both task-space and sub-task tracking errors. A comparative simulation study with a robust controller and the proposed controller are included for a 3 link planar robot manipulator.