The Fabry-Perot interferometer based fiber optical sensor (FP sensor) was first known in the early of 1980 s. It has been experienced high speed development in recent 10 years and gradually shows the superiority in special applications such as aviation, oil exploration, source of energy and civil engineering. Because it has excellent reliability, and high sensitivity in harsh environments such as high temperature, high pressure, strong radiation and narrow space. This paper firstly reviews the history of fiber Fabry-Perot sensor, then introduces its recent progress and future development trends from the aspects of sensors, demodulation methods, hardware systems and applications based on the principle of fiber optical sensor.