In order to improve the automation level of power systems, reduce the labor intensity of power workers in the maintenance of high voltage transmission system, and ensure their personal safety, a 6-DOF articulated robot for climbing power tower is designed and proposed. Kinematics analysis and solution are carried out for the configuration. In order to solve that the traditional analytical method used in the inverse kinematics of manipulator has the problem of complicated operation and the problem that singular points can not be inverse operation, this paper presents an inverse kinematics algorithm for the electric climbing robot based on the improved beetle antennae search algorithm. The DH model of the electric climbing robot is established, and the forward kinematics equation is obtained. A cost function is established according to the positive kinematics equation and the target pose, the cost function is optimized using the improved beetle antennae search algorithm, and Matlab is used to realize this algorithm for simulation verification. Simulation results show that contrasting with the traditional beetle antennae search algorithm, the improved genetic algorithm and the improved particle swarm optimization algorithm, the inverse kinematics solution algorithm of the electric climbing robot based on the improved beetle antennae search algorithm has good convergence and high solution accuracy, which can be used in the robot real-time control system.