Industrial robots have become one of the key research directions of industrial intelligence in China because of their high degree of automation and positioning accuracy. Industrial robots would gradually replace manual labor and play an irreplaceable role in the field of intelligent manufacturing. However, in the process of use, many factors may reduce the accuracy of industrial robots, which would directly affect their application in high-precision fields, such as blade grinding and high-precision drilling and riveting. To address the above problems, on the basis of summarizing the common calibration model of industrial robots, the current situation and problems of calibration technology and error compensation methods for industrial robots are analyzed, and the future development trend of calibration methods for industrial robots is elaborated to provide reference for the subsequent development of online calibration and error compensation methods and specification standards for industrial robots.