Rheumatoid arthritis，as an autoimmune disease，may cause cartilage damage in intra-articular cavities. Since the small blood vessels and lymphoid tissues are absent in intra-articular cavities，nutrients are transferred by diffusion，which lead to the limitation of repair capacity in injured articular cartilage，as the bottleneck of rheumatoid arthritis treatment. Clinically，the measures of repairing articular cartilage are as follows：micro fractures，autologous cartilage transplantation，allograft cartilage transplantation，though all with some shortcomings. Currently，the research is focusing on tissue engineering method to obtain stable chondrocytes for autologous chondrocyte transplantation. The method may be the direction of future development as convenient，less invasive and with fewer side effects. This paper describes the progress of repairing cartilage defects based on tissue engineering in specific steps.