In the present work, the design of an L1 adaptive controller for position control of a linear servo motor for X-Y table application has been developed. The AC Permanent Magnet Linear Synchronous Servo Motor (PMLSM) is considered. A comparative study between L1 adaptive control and Model Reference Adaptive Control (MRAC) has been made. The effectiveness of the L1 adaptive controller against uncertain parameters is analyzed based on simulated results. Robustness characteristics of both L1 adaptive controller and model reference adaptive controller to different input reference signals and different structures of uncertainty have been evaluated. The L1-adaptive controller could ensure uniformly bounded transient and asymptotic tracking for input and output signals. Simulations based on MATLAB of an x-y table based on PMLSM with time-varying friction and disturbance are presented to verify the theoretical findings. The simulation results within the environment of MATLAB/SIMULINK showed that L1-adaptive controller could give better tracking performance, dynamic and steady-state characteristics, than that obtained from MRAC for considered types of input and for various structures of uncertainties.