<p>Sheet metal parts are indispensable to the aeronautical industries due to their superior characteristics. However, manufacturing such components by robot-assisted bending technology is challenging with reliability concerned. Particularly, machine structure, forming accuracy, process and path planning, and automatic programming are always bottlenecks that limit the industrial application of this technique. In this paper, the structure development of designed bending machine is reviewed. Then the forming accuracy guaranteed by compensating for the robot’s positional error and material’s springback property has been reviewed. The process and path are planned by integrating modelling fitness function and intelligent algorithms for an optimized implementation. The automatic programming methods for adapting to various bending demands are summarized. Then there is an application presented to illustrate the effectiveness of robot-assisted bending in sheet metal parts manufacturing. Finally, the challenges, development trends and perspectives of bending technology are discussed.</p>