Abstract: To construct a mobile robot with environmental cognitive mechanism which is similar to that of human beings and animals, the structure of the hippocampus, the loop of information transformation and the spatial discharge cognitive mechanism of the cells related to the environmental cognition were described in detail in this paper. The cognitive mechanism of the hippocampal formation was applied to the robot platform and a typical model of the structure of the hippocampus was introduced to elaborate its application in the robot navigation. The results show that the robot can enter an environment and explore the space environment freely. Through continuous exploration, the robot ultimately forms the representation of the environment, namely, it constructs the cognitive map of the environment successfully and then accomplishes its navigation task in complex environment based on cognitive map.