In the absence of family, friends, and pets, as well as a serious shortage of nursing staff, intelligent social robots will play an important complementary role in the future of daily care, emotional companionship, and emotional comfort. Although domestic scholars have paid much attention to the study of AI consumer behavior, the research focusing on the human-robot emotional relationship is still extremely scarce. Therefore, this paper systematically reviews the domestic and foreign literature on the human-robot emotional relationship, summarizes the existing theoretical framework in terms of relationship types, formation mechanisms, and consequences, and points out its future research directions. It is hoped that the existing literature in this field will be presented in a panoramic view, and scholars will be inspired to study further in this field. At the same time, this paper also provides theoretical guidance and practical implications for AI enterprises to select appropriate target groups and design intelligent social robots in an emotion-oriented way, and for the government to formulate ethical regulations for the industry.