Smart materials can be defined as the materials that have the capability of sensing and reacting to environmental conditions or stimulates.In recent years, a wide range of novel smart materials have been developed, and their applications now have covered various important fields including aerospace, automobile, telecommunications,and so forth.This talk mainly focuses on recent progresses of smart materials and their based composite materials, such as Shape Memory Polymer (SMP) and its composites, as well as their applications.This presented work summarizes the recent advances in synthesis of novel epoxy-based SMP, styrene-based SMP, cyanate ester-based SMP, polyurethane-based SMP, design and characterization of SMP composites (SMPCs) filled with nickel chains, short carbon fiber, carbon nanotube chains, carbon nanopaper, and so on.The SMP driven approaches, including heat, electricity, light, magnetic field, microwave, water and solvent have been introduced, and a detailed overview of the recent progress of SMPCs used in the space deployable structures (i.e.SMPC hinge, truss and frame) was presented in this research.The fabrication of morphing structures and smart mandrels using shape memory polymers was also studied.For the sake of reducing the dynamic vibration of the structure, some adaptive structures were introduced.Then several multifunctional nanocomposites such as electrospun nation nanofibers, self-heating fiber reinforced polymer composite were proposed.Finally, the mechanical behaviors of shape memory polymer and its composites such as post bucking behaviors of SMPC and mechanism of multi-shape memory effect of SMP were researched for their better applications.