Abstract: When the hydraulic bolt drilling rig is working, it is necessary to accurately control the orientation of the drilling bit in the working space and the angle and distance between the drilling bit and the roadway wall. It has very high requirements for the adjustment capability of the drilling arm. At present, there is little research on automatic positioning and autonomous path planning of hydraulic bolt drilling rig. In order to solve the above problems, a path planning method for the drilling arm of hydraulic bolt drilling rig is proposed. Based on the working parameters of the CMM2-36 mine hydraulic bolt drilling rig and the structure of the drilling arm, the 3D model of the drilling arm is built and simulated on the Matlab platform. The continuous path planning scheme is adopted. The joint angle planning method of the drilling arm based on the cubic polynomial interpolation method cannot guarantee the acceleration of the drilling arm at the beginning and end positions to be 0. In order to solve the above problems, the fifth polynomial interpolation method is adopted to plan the joint angle of the drilling arm. Taking the roadway roof as an example, 32 drilling positioning points are set on the roof. Three path planning schemes are designed and compared. It is concluded that the "工"-shaped path has the shortest distance and the most reasonable trajectory. The D-H coordinate system is constructed based on kinematics theory. The forward and inverse kinematics of the drilling arm is solved. The theoretical maximum workspace of the drilling arm of the hydraulic bolt drilling rig is solved by the Monte Carlo method. Therefore, the drilling arm will not collide with the roadway and the safety of the work is ensured. The simulation results show that on the premise of meeting the requirements of roadway support, the end drill frame of the drilling arm of the hydraulic bolt drilling rig can realize automatic positioning and independent path planning. And the drilljing arm will not collide with the roadway, which can ensure work safety.