The present invention relates to the technical field of robots and optical cables and more particularly relates to an optical cable for a robot. The optical cable has a plurality of optical fibers, aprotective layer and a sheath layer coating the protective layer. The optical cable is characterized in that the optical cable also has a bending resistant layer in the protective layer, the bending resistant layer has multiple fiber passing holes which are not connected to each other inside, each of the fiber passing holes has an optical fiber inside, a gap is between each optical fiber and the fiber passing hole where the optical fiber is located, and each of the optical fiber is formed by a fiber, a tightening layer outside the fiber and a wear resistant layer outside the tightening layer.The invention also discloses a method for manufacturing the optical cable. The optical cable and the method have the advantages of light weight, good communication performance, wear resistance, oil resistance and good bending performance.