The iris recognition technology as the biometrics with the best prospect is introduced. Based on the introduction of the technology from the whole, the representational algorithms are described in detail. At last, aimed at the problems existed in the process of iris recognition, the trend for the future is put forward——the localization algorithms with high accuracy, fast speed and good robustness, high effective feature extraction methods, machine learning methods, the evaluation of iris image quality, the iris recognition under incomplete and non-cooperative situation, and the detection of live iris.