Abstract: In recent years, the field of exercise intervention in autism has shown a booming trend, but there are still many problems needed to be clarified. Based on this, this paper reviews the progress of exercise intervention in autism from two perspectives: basic and applied research. The field of basic research has witnessed the exploration in three successive stages: relevance, causality and mechanism, showing that exercise intervention serves as an effective approach to ameliorating behavioral symptoms of autism, and its research theory has evolved from a single to comprehensive perspective. The field of applied research has summarized the dose effects of exercise such as exercise intensity, events and forms, reviewed the utilization of combined interventions, sorted out the development of exercise intervention models and function evaluation tools, and generalized the preliminary application of emerging artificial intelligence technologies. In the future, the field of exercise intervention in autism should closely align with societal needs, enhance interdisciplinary collaboration and diverse thinking, and foster the integration and innovation of foundational research. At the same time, we should focus on the transformation of basic research achievements and accelerate the application of the researches. Furthermore, a stronger bridge between basic and applied research will be built to facilitate the industry-academy-research-application interactive development, making contributions to autism rehabilitation through exercises.