Aiming at the problem that the traditional ant colony algorithm has slow convergence speed and may fall into local optimum in the path planning process, the ant colony algorithm is combined with the artificial potential field method added with virtual traction and fast function, and the resultant force of the potential field is introduced as part of the heuristic information of the ant search path point.The combined algorithm has higher global search ability, avoids the local optimum problem caused by the misleading of the heuristic information in the traditional ant colony algorithm, and improves the convergence speed.In order to verify the effectiveness of this method, a simulation experiment with Matlab software was carried out.The result shows that the robots motion trajectory is smooth and is close to the optimal path.