<p>The green and intelligent transformation of the manufacturing industry has become the focus of attention in various countries. Through the analysis of China’s empirical data, this paper found that the application of industrial robots can effectively reduce the emission intensity and total emission of industrial carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide to promote green development, so as to realize the collaborative governance of reducing environmental pollution and carbon emission. In terms of mechanism, industrial robot applications play a role by improving capacity utilization, realizing economies of scale, attracting foreign investment and promoting biased technological progress, so as to realize the collaborative governance of reducing environmental pollution and carbon emission. Further analyses find that the application of industrial robots made technological progress tend to use capital factor, save energy and labor factors input, and the industrial structure optimization plays a positive moderating role in it. Through LMDI decomposition, it is found that the current production mode of “simple machine replacing human” can’t reduce pollutant emissions, and it is necessary to give full play to the productivity improvement, technological progress, factor substitution, and foreign capital introduction brought by robot applications to promote the collaborative governance of reducing environmental pollution and carbon emission.</p>