The invention provides a substation inspection robot system and inspection method. The system involves a moving mechanism, an information acquisition mechanism and a control mechanism; the informationacquisition mechanism comprises a lifting support located on a moving platform, and a secondary equipment information acquisition device arranged at the top of the lifting support; the control mechanism comprises a controller, a two-dimensional laser radar and a tracking sensor which are arranged on the moving platform; and after the controller receives a signal output by the two-dimensional laser radar, a SLAM navigation algorithm is firstly adopted to generate a scene map and synchronous positioning is carried out, then the inspection path planning is carried out to control the inspection robot to sequentially move to the positions in which each secondary equipment is located, then the pose of the inspection robot is adjusted according to a signal output by the tracking sensor, and thesecondary equipment information acquisition device is controlled to work after the inspection robot reaches preset mark position. According to the substation inspection robot system and inspection method, the inspection robot can freely shuttle in narrow paths, and the operation state and information acquisition of each secondary equipment can be completed automatically.