Abstract. This paper proposes an adaptive control strategy for trajectory tracking of a Wheeled Mobile Robot (WMR) which consists of a suspended platform and a manipulator. When the WMR moves in the presence of friction and external disturbance, the trajectory can hardly be tracked accurately by applying the backstepping approach. For addressing this problem, considering the dynamic interaction, a dynamic model of the system is constructed by using Direct Path Method (DPM). An adaptive fuzzy control combined with backstepping approach based on the dynamic model is proposed. To track the trajectory accurately, a fuzzy compensator is proposed to compensate modeling uncertainty such as friction and external disturbance. Moreover, to reduce the approximation error and ensure the system stability, a robust term is added to the adaptive control law. Simulation results show the effectiveness and merits of the proposed control strategy in the counteraction of modeling uncertainty and the trajectory tracking.