Abstract: In this paper，the application of Particle Swarm Optimization in robotic path planning is studied.We proposed a novel encoding method to represent each path in solution space which makes it possible to avoid the time-consuming environment modeling process.With an obstacle repulsion term being added in the cost function，optimization for robot-obstacle distance is realized.By introducing crossover and mutation operator to the basic PSO algorithm，some noticeable improvement in algorithm performance is achieved.The results of computer simulation demonstrates the superiority of the enhanced algorithm.