Machine vision has been developed nearly for 70 years and been widely applied in electronics, automotive manufacturing, food processing, etc. With deepening study of its theory and technology in forestry industry, the industry of wood products is moving steadily toward the goal of automated identification and production to improve the manufacturing intelligence of enterprises. In this study, theoretical and algorithmic research on image acquisition, feature extraction, recognition, and classification involved in machine vision-based wood recognition technology were analyzed on the basis of its global development. The applications of machine vision in the wood materials, such as the identification of tree species, wood inspection and classification, defects detection of wood product, surface analysis of wood color, and quality control of furnishing products were thoroughly analyzed. The development trend of machine vision in the production and management of wood materials was considered in the current development of wood and furnishing enterprises. These results lay a solid foundation for wood science research, and intelligent manufacture of wooden furniture, and efficient development of greener and cleaner production of the furniture industry, which could improve the environmental effect of the wood products and furniture and make a great contribution for the carbon goal of “30-60” in China.