This work studies to improve the efficiency of the tracking control system based on the nonsingular terminal sliding mode technique for the robot manipulators in case of sudden faults. In the proposed control strategy, the adaptability is first enhanced by the self-updating algorithms for all control gains of the main sliding mode controller. Next, the unknown dynamics and abrupt faults are estimated to ensure the robustness and tracking performances of the control system. In addition, the proposed control method has more advantages in addressing the inevitable updating/estimating errors and guaranteeing the continuity and smoothness of control signals through an added robust controller. And based on the Lyapunov theorem, the designed adaptive updating/estimating control strategy has guaranteed for the stability, robustness, and finite time convergence of the control system. In the end, the improved features of the proposed control method are verified by the compared numerical simulation results.