This paper presents a saturated Nussbaum function based approach for robotic systems with unknown actuator dynamics. To eliminate the effect of the control shock from the traditional Nussbaum function, a new type of the saturated Nussbaum function is developed with the idea of time-elongation. Moreover, by exploiting properties of the proposed Nussbaum function, a promising theorem is established to deal with unknown multiple actuator nonlinearities. In what follows, the proposed theorem is integrated with the adaptive control technique such that the stability analysis of the robotic system is completed. It thus guarantees that the state of the robotic system asymptotically converges to the desired trajectory. Finally, comparative studies are carried out to validate the effectiveness and the superiority of the proposed approach. © 2015 IEEE.