This paper proposes a compliance control strategy for the robot manipulators accidentally interact-ing with an unknown environment. In this proposed method each in the diagonal stiffness matrix corre-sponding to the task coordinate in a Cartesian space is adaptively adjusted during contact along the corresponding axis based on the contact force with its environment. This method can be used for both unconstrained and constrained motions without any switching mechanism which often causes undesirable instability and/or vibrational motion of the end-effector. The experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method by employing a two link direct drive manipulator interacting with an unknown environment.