In this paper a new type of sliding mode based fractional-order iterative learning control (ILC) is proposed for nonlinear systems in the presence of uncertainties. For the first time, a sliding mode controller is combined with fractional-order ILC. This sliding mode based [Formula: see text] and [Formula: see text]-type ILC is applied on a nonlinear robot manipulator. Convergence of the proposed method is investigated when the stability is also proved. In this method, the control signal at any iteration is generated in two parts. The first section comes from the sliding mode controller while the second part is output of the fractional-order ILC. The latter signal is assessed using its previous amount and the sliding mode error signal. The achieved control law is capable of controlling nonlinear iterative processes, perturbed by bounded disturbances with high accuracy. The same frequent disturbance is eliminated by the iterative learning part, while the effect of nonrepetitive uncertainty is improved by the sliding mode part. The sliding mode based [Formula: see text]-type ILC (as an adaptive control law) is proposed to control a single-link arm robot. The controller is then improved to sliding mode based [Formula: see text]-type ILC. The effectiveness of the proposed method is again investigated on a single-link robot manipulator through a simulation approach. It is shown that the controller for [Formula: see text] provides performance by means of faster response together with more accuracy with respect to a conventional ILC.