Abstract: With the increasing scale and complexity of power system, traditional manual inspection method is difficult to meet the requirements of current power inspection. Inspection robots have been gradually applied to electric power inspection for their safety, reliability and intelligence, and completed global traversal and obstacle avoidance by advance prediction, self determination and smart navigation in the operation process. The core task of electric power patrol inspection is to plan a safe and optimal running trajectory. This paper systematically analyzes and combs various methods in the process of patrol inspection, expounds the algorithms applied in different scenes such as substations and transmission lines,and summarizes the research status and improvement methods of robot path planning algorithms. On this basis, the research and development direction of the path planning of electric power inspection robots in the future are prospected.