An adaptive impedance control algorithm for tendon-driven dexterous hands is presented. The main idea of this algorithm is to compensate the output of the classical impedance control by an offset that is a proportion-integration-differentiation (PID) expression of force error. The adaptive impedance control can adjust the impedance parameters indirectly when the environment position and stiffness are uncertain. In addition, the position controller and inverse kinematics solver are specially designed for the tendon-driven hand. The performance of the proposed control algorithm is validated by using MATLAB and ADAMS software for joint simulation. ADAMS is a great software for virtual prototype analysis. A tendon-driven hand model is built and a control module is generated in ADAMS. Then the control system is built in MATLAB using the control module. The joint simulation results demonstrate fast response and robustness of the algorithm when the environment is not exactly known, so the algorithm is suitable for the control of tendon-driven dexterous hands.