The use of industrial robots based on MATLAB simulation for water environment monitoring is to monitor the water environment better, improve monitoring efficiency and reduce monitoring costs. The robot can better collect data and can engage in deeper water-specific information. In this paper, based on the discussion of the water environment monitoring robots used in countries around the world for water environment monitoring, we introduce a MATLAB-based simulation of industrial robots in a wide range of water environments to simulate the autonomous data acquisition system. The main advantages are: compared with other robots, it can realize the “wide range” of water environment data collection; compared with fixed buoys, it can realize the “autonomous” collection of water environment monitoring data and gives the autonomous collection process and hierarchical software progression. The autonomous acquisition process and hierarchical software architecture are presented. The simulation results analysis shows no difference between the simulated data and the predicted data from the historical data using MATLAB-based industrial robots for water environment monitoring. This shows that the development of industrial robot simulation in water environment monitoring is promising and feasible.