The invention provides an upper limb exoskeleton control method based on motor imagery. The method comprises following steps: 1), according to left arrow prompt or down arrow prompt in a display screen, a subject performs corresponding motor imagery, namely, left hand motor imagery and foot motor imagery, and produced original electroencephalogram signals are pre-processed; 2), the pre-processed original electroencephalogram signals are input into a CNN structure and subjected to feature extraction and classification, and an identification result is output; 3), a driver control signal is acquired according to the output identification result, upper limb exoskeleton is driven and front arms are driven to correspondingly move; if the classification result indicates the left hand motor imagery, the upper limb exoskeleton performs a stretching action, and if the classification result indicates the foot motor imagery, the upper limb exoskeleton performs a bending action. When the CNN structure is designed, a convolution kernel is set as a vector according to the characteristic of time and space feature combination of the electroencephalogram signals. The invention further provides an upper limb exoskeleton control system based on the motor imagery. The classification and identification rate is higher, and experience effect is good.