Aiming at the shortcomings of traditional ant colony algorithm

such as slow convergence speed

easy to fall into local optimum

and lack of initial pheromone

an improved ant colony algorithm is proposed. In the initial stage

the pheromone is additionally added on the connecting line between the starting point and the ending point to improve the convergence speed of the algorithm; the heuristic factor in the original heuristic function is improved to improve the optimizing efficiency of the algorithm; and the volatilization formula of the pheromone concentration is improved

which let it obeys the Gaussian distribution and makes the pheromone volatilization dynamic.The simulation results show that the improved ant colony algorithm has faster convergence speed

more stable convergence performance

shortens the path-finding distance

and makes the robot effectively avoid obstacles

it has good practicality

in mobile robot path.