Mobile robots are widely used in many industrial fields. Research on path planning for mobile robots is one of the most important aspects of mobile robots research. Path planning for a mobile robot is to find a collision-free route, through the robot’s environment with obstacles, from a specified start location to the desired goal destination while satisfying certain optimization criteria. Determination of a collision-free path for a robot between start and goal positions through obstacles cluttered in a workspace is central to the design of an autonomous robot path planning. This paper presents a comprehensive study on state of art mobile robot path planning techniques focusing on algorithms that optimize the path in the obstacle abundant environment. Simulation scenarios are performed in the perspective of single and multi-robot path planning and the experimental results show the best performing path planning technique in the corresponding scenario. This paper intends to give assistance in the better understanding of the path planning techniques and also guide researchers to formulate novel techniques for better path planning in both single and multi-robot environments.