In this thesis adaptive sliding mode controllers for a motion system are designed and evaluated. These controllers are capable of adjusting itself in order to reject disturbances and unknown dynamics of the system while maintaining the desired accuracy. A mathematical model of a single-axis positioning system is used as the reference motion system. The adaptive controllers are designed using the adaptive gain technique as well as the time-varying sliding surface one. The controllers are simulated in different test scenarios with changing disturbances and reference signals. Its performance is evaluated and compared with conventional controllers used in these kind of systems. The results show great adaptation capabilities for both techniques and outperform the conventional controller