Abstract: Wind energy is one of the mainstream types of renewable energy. At present, the majority of the traditional wind turbines could only make use of the near-earth wind energy. However, the high-altitude wind energy has a greater value and potential for its high stability and large storage of energy. The research of exploiting high-altitude wind energy is starting up in China while there are studies about the usage of high-altitude wind energy across the world and some were in the process of flight test. The research on the variation and development of the AWES is reported in this paper, which contains an analy-sis of Crosswind Mode, an introduction of worldly typical AWESs in last decade, a discussion of critical points including tether, accuracy control, multifunctional ground station and comprehensive optimization as a foundation for future development and further research on this direction.