The artificial potential field (APF) method provides simple and effective motion planner for practical purpose though it has its inherent disadvantages: local minima and oscillations in the presence of obstacles .This paper put forward a new method for improving the disadvantages of the path planning based on traditional APF. Before calculating the resultant force that is put on an object in the potential field, we build links among closed obstacles so as to optimize the path to be calculated. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by simulation results and practical applications.