An improved ant colony path planning algorithm was proposed to solve the problems such as blindness,slow conver-gence,long path and many break points.Firstly,by improving the mathematical model of heuristic factor,the selection probability of roulette in eight directions is limited,so as to reduce the number of iterations.Then,the adaptive updating influence factor is es-tablished to further improve the routing method and the robustness of the algorithm by monitoring the location of target points in real time.Finally,through the path secondary optimization,the shortest path formed by the ant colony algorithm is further elimina-ted redundant nodes,and the shortest path is further optimized,so as to smooth path,reduce the break point of the path,reduce the path length,and improve the efficiency of the material transport trolley.Through the simulation experiment of different propor-tions of obstacles in the grid environment map,it is verified that the proposed improved ant colony algorithm has faster iteration rate,stronger searching ability,better robustness and shorter path.