Abstract: The Unmanned Surface Vehicle(USV)is one of the hot research fields of unmanned vehicle, and its launch and recovery technology has become a frontier research topic due to the difficulties in recovery guidance, docking, coupling or uncoupling and so on. Through collecting and sorting out the technical points of the launch and recovery technology for USV that has existed and been under development in domestic and abroad, this paper concludes with three kinds of launch and recovery systems, i.e. davit, stern ramp and dock cabin. Then the comparison among these three kinds is carried out in aspects of equipment configuration, space demand, wave influence, mothership speed, adaptive sea state, operation condition, launch and recovery duration, etc., and then it is concluded that the stern ramp type is more suitable for the USV; in the meanwhile, practical research direction that contributes to realizing autonomous launch and recovery is pointed out, which plays a guiding role in the development of the USV and its launch and recovery technology.