SRM(Switched Reluctance Motor) drives require the accurate position and speed information of the rotor. These informations are generally provided by a shaft encoder or resolver. High temperature, EMI, and dust may make detection performance deteriorate. Therefore, the elimination of the position and speed sensor is desirable. In this paper, a nonlinear adaptive observer using the MRAS(Model Reference Adaptive System) is proposed. The rotor speed and position are estimated by the adaptation law using the real and estimated currents. The stability of the adaptive observer is proved by Lyapunov stability theory. The proposed methods are implemented with TMS320C31 DSP. Experimental results prove that the observer has a good estimation performance of the rotor speed and position despite of the parameter variations and loads, and the speed control can be accomplished in the wide speed range.