Autonomous sailboat is a new kind of multipurpose low cost operated marine mobile observation platform which is powered by marine environmental energyand can be competent to pelagic operations, has the functions of real-time data transmission and real-time positioning.It uses wind power as a driving force, solar panels or other devicesare used to generate electricity to provide power for control system and sensors.Compared with the traditional marine mobile observation platforms,the marine observation of long-endurance, large range and high spatial and temporal resolution observation especially theair-sea interfacemarine environmental elementobservationsuch assea surface layer meteorological dataand subsurface layer marine datacan be realized with low cost with the help of autonomous sailboat.The collected datacan be provided for the front hot topics research such as simulation of global climate change, ocean acidification, ocean carbon cycle and air-sea-ice interaction, etc.Representativeautonomous sailboats are introduced and analyzed, the structures of autonomous sailboats, theresearch status of movement mechanism and motion control method are reviewed anddevelopment trends and key technology of autonomous sailboats are discussed.