PurposeWith the development of technology, the application scenarios of mobile robots are becoming more and more extensive, accompanied by a variety of application scenarios suitable and safe path planning algorithms are indispensable for mobile robots.Design/methodology/approachThe purpose of this paper to improve the safety performance of your bot during the execution of tasks. The methods are synthesized in three main areas: setting appropriate safety distances based on the actual radius of the robot, turn penalty reduces the number of turns by applying an additional penalty to the number of turns in a heuristic function and path smoothing is used to improve path reliability by reducing the number of right-angle turns.FindingsA suitable safety distance greatly improves the safety of mobile robots and facilitates their development. Optimization of turns in the path of mobile robots improves the travel efficiency of robots. Enhancing the safety of mobile robots has become a research hotspot for path-planning algorithms.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a path planning scheme for mobile robots with safe distances, which provides readers with a comprehensive and systematic progress of path planning research. It helps readers to get inspiration from enhancing the safety of mobile robots.