The work aims to analyze and review the research related to the use of surface electromyography (sEMG) techniques to assess human factors and ergonomic issues, in order to promote innovation and development of surface EMG techniques in the field of human factors and ergonomics. Firstly, the definition, development history and research methods of human factors and ergonomics were outlined. Then, the research methods and progress in surface EMG techniques were summarized in terms of four experimental processes, such as data acquisition methods, data pre-processing, feature selection and feature extraction, training and classifier selection, and a detailed summary of current research hotspots and research trends in the field was presented. The surface EMG techniques are still the important assessment methods in the field of human factors and ergonomics. With the continuous development of innovative technologies and deep learning algorithms, the construction of large scale publicly available data sets and innovative intelligent evaluation systems from a multimodal and multi-method cross-fertilisation perspective will become a key research direction for surface EMG in the field of human factors and ergonomics in the future.