A new adaptive control technique is proposed to control the speed of the induction motor in this paper. First, the rotor flux is estimated with the simplified rotor flux observer on the rotor reference frame and the feedback linearization theory is used to decouple the rotor speed and the flux amplitude. Then, a new composite adaptive control algorithm based on an integral cost function is designed to control the speed of the induction motor. The overall speed control system is verified to be stable and robust to the parameter variations and external disturbances. Experimental results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the presented approach. The good speed tracking and load regulating responses can be obtained by the proposed controller.