Many effective robot-manipulator control schemes using a disturbance observer have been reported in the literature in the past decades. Besides, the disturbance observer combined with the Kalman filter has attracted the attention of researchers in the field of motion control. The major advantage of a motion control system based on the Kalman filter and disturbance observer is the realization of high robustness against disturbance and parameter variations, effective noise suppression and wideband force sensing. This paper presents a survey of motion control based on the Kalman filter and disturbance observer, which have been previously introduced by the authors. Several control schemes, as well as formulations and applications of the Kalman filter and disturbance observer, are described in the paper. The performance and effectiveness of the control schemes are evaluated to give a useful and comprehensive design of the Kalman filter and disturbance observer in various motion control applications.