The phenomenon of highway tunnel disease is inevitable during daily operation. Traditional detection methods mainly relying on manual detection are characterized by low detection efficiency and obvious subjectivi- ty in test results. At the same time, it is difficult to guarantee the safety of the detector. With the rapid develop- ment of highway in our country, traditional detection methods can no longer meet the needs of highway operation and maintenance, then the rapid non-destructive detection was introduced at the right moment. At present, a va- riety of highway tunnel inspection vehicles have been developed to detect tunnel diseases efficiently and accu- rately and can automatically process data with supporting software. Highway tunnel inspection has such advan- tages as high degree of automation, rapid detection speed, high accuracy, objective results, full coverage and so on . This paper summarizes the highway tunnel detection technology to explore the development of highway tun- nel disease inspection vehicles in China.