A globally exponentially stable speed observer for mechanical systems was recently reported in the literature, under the assumptions of known (or no) Coulomb friction and no disturbances. In this note we propose and adaptive version of this observer, which is robust vis vis constant disturbances. Moreover, we propose a new globally convergent speed observer that, besides rejecting the disturbances, estimates some unknown friction coefficients for a class of mechanical systems that contains several practical examples. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.