The manufacture principle of automated placement, including tape laying and fiber placement, and its advantages and applications in abroad aerospace industries are briefly summarized firstly. Then, the progress of tape laying technologies in China, such as machine design，CAD/CAM software, materials and technology, is addressed. By analyzing the key technologies and application, it is pointed out that the efficient tape laying with low cost will be the hot point in the future. Later, the progress in fundamental studies on fiber placement in different universities and institutes is summarized, and fiber placement application studies such as industry machine and processing in Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics are introduced. Finally, the key problems of fiber placement are summarized and the corresponding study subjects are suggested.