This article aims at the problem of trajectory tracking for industrial robotic manipulators with control backlash. An arctangent terminal sliding mode surface is developed to deal with the lumped disturbance and enhance the robustness of the system. A novel adaptive super-twisting sliding mode control method is developed to achieve fast convergence and continuous control. The chattering in control law is surmounted by using super-twisting method. The lumped disturbance with unknown upper bound is compensated with the help of the adaptive technique. Based on the Lyapunov stability theory, the sliding mode surface will be arrived in a finite time and the trajectory tracking error will converge to zero in a finite time. The feasibility of the proposed control scheme is validated through an example of a two-link robotic manipulator.