Adaptive cooperative control of a soft elbow rehabilitation exoskeleton based on improved joint torque estimation

•A soft elbow exoskeleton is developed for the rehabilitation training of disabled patients.•The human elbow joint torque is estimated via a Hill-type musculoskeletal model and a Gaussian RBFN.•An intention-based adaptive cooperative control strategy is investigated to promote active participation.•The effectiveness is validated via three pilot experiments conducted by healthy and stroke volunteers.