Abstract
A method based on ant colony algorithm was proposed for the path planning of an inspection robot which moves among several checkpoints. The path planning problem was simplified to minimize the path which connects every point by applying the grid method and the visibility graph method. Then an ant colony optimization algorithm was used to optimize the path between two checkpoints and the orders to arrive. The algorithm steps of the proposed path planning based on ant colony algorithm was described. Simulation result shows that the method presented in this paper obtain the optimization path and solve the path planning problem of the inspection robot.