In consideration of the disturbance influence, the system always has nonlinear terms. This paper proposes an adaptive autonomous cooperative control method for a class of nonlinear system based on the directed graph. The directed graph is used to describe the topology relationship among individuals in the system. The difference between desired and actual value of the system state is defined as error, by exchanging error information among individuals, and online-updating the nonlinear terms, all individual states are synchronized up to the desired value. The differential of the actual state is not needed, which reduces the requirements for relative measurment between individuals efficiently. Finally, the numerical simulation results show the correctness of the control law, and by configuring the control parameters reasonably, we can achieve high degree of control accuracy.