A simple and effective improved A* algorithm is proposed to solve the problem of robot path planning in the integrated installation of large-scale laser devices. Compared with the traditional A* algorithm, the algorithm has been improved in three steps. Firstly, the walking direction is limited, which avoids the phenomenon of crossing obstacles occurred in the traditional A* algorithm; Secondly, the heuristic function is optimized as a weighted Manhattan distance function, which accelerates the expansion of nodes in the x direction or y direction, and reduces the surge of traversal nodes caused by limiting the walking direction. Thirdly, the turning penalty term is introduced to reduce the number of turns in the path planning process, and improve the search efficiency and quality. The performance of the three-step improved A* algorithm is verified in different size raster maps, and compared with the traditional A* algorithm. Experimental results show that in simple maps, the number of nodes traversed by the three-step improved A* algorithm is slightly higher than that of the traditional A* algorithm, and the number of turns is equivalent to that of the traditional A* algorithm, but the obstacle avoidance performance is obviously better than that of the traditional A* algorithm, which is more conducive to the safe walking of robots. In complex maps, considering the priority relationship of traversal nodes, turn times and path length, the parameters of the three-step improved A* algorithm can be adjusted to obtain the optimal path planning result.