In the paper, a multisection snake-like manipulator named SnakeHelper is described. For rescue task, the manipulator is designed with cable driven and rear actuators. First, the mechanism design is presented. The manipulator consists of rear actuators, links, joints and cables. Then, some considerations on mechanism design of the device are given. The moment of the motor is calculated. The rotatory angle of each joint is also given against design parameters. At last, the kinematics analysis of the manipulator by D-H method is given.

According to the ruins caused by disaster, a new kind of search and rescue device SnakeRescuer is developed, which can actively go into ruin interstices to search and rescue victims. Inspired by industrial endoscope and snake-like robot which usually are used in searching and rescuing, a new kind of mechanism is designed, which has advantages of both industrial endoscope and snake-like robot. It consists of multi-section crawler modules and the base body which some like industrial endoscope but thicker and more rigid. Each crawler module is made up of four track units and could be attached to the base body and could drive the device to go into the ruins. According to the ruins of the environment, the track drive unit is designed first. Then a control method for the drive unit is designed. Finally, some basic experimental results show that the device can be applied to ruin rescuing.