Power system blackouts can’t be avoided fundamentally, so it is of great significance to realize the adaptive and collaborative restoration control of transmission and distribution system to improve the power system blackout defense capability. In this paper, the existing researches are summarized from three aspects, i.e., decision-making of transmission system restoration control, decision-making of distribution system restoration control, decision-making of transmission and distribution coordinated restoration control, the research difficulties are expounded, and the future research directions are prospected. In view of the characteristics of multi-level, cross-regional, multi-stage and strong uncertainty of collaborative restoration control of transmission and distribution systems, it is pointed out that the establishment of restoration decision support system by comprehensive application of optimization algorithms, expert rules and numerical simulation programs is an important mean to realize adaptive restoration control.