Metal materials, known as "industrial skeleton", are widely used in communication, electronics, transportation, medical, and other fields because of their good physical, chemical, and mechanical properties. However, corrosion, abrasion, fatigue, and other failure modes generally occur on the metal surface, which greatly limits the service life and effect of the material. As a new and environment-friendly surface strengthening technology, the ultrasonic surface rolling process (USRP) has become a research focus because of its great application potential in the field of material surface protection. The work aims to introduce the protection status of USRP in the field of wear, fatigue, and corrosion in China and internationally, and discuss the mechanism of USRP on the surface protection of metal materials.