Abstract:An improved ant colony algorithm is proposed to solve the path planning problem of lunar robot in complex terrain. The algorithm constructs a rasterizing topographic map, and based on the artificial potential field, the heuristic function of ant colony algorithm is improved to accelerate the convergence speed of the algorithm. Also, the spatial pheromone partition method is introduced to improve the search ability of ant colony in the area near the shortest path. Experimental results show that the improved ant colony algorithm can significantly improve the success rate of path planning and accelerate the convergence speed. After the algorithm plans the shortest path of the lunar robot, the virtual lunar environment and lunar rover are constructed based on unity3d by using the virtual simulation technology. The path planning effect of the lunar robot in the lunar environment is intuitively displayed.