Abstract: In this study, a snake robot with an orthogonal joint and active wheel is designed. The robot can not only realize the basic winding motion, longitudinal traveling wave motion, lateral rolling motion, and lateral traveling wave motion but also put forward a control strategy for climbing steps. The robot obtains the step height with a laser sensor and elevation angle of the head joint and lifts the corresponding height joint to the step. The driving speed of the active wheel and the angular velocity of the joint are controlled to achieve the purpose of climbing up the step, and the load feedback of the steering gear of the head pitching joint is used as the condition to judge whether to climb down the step or not. based on the robot operating system (ROS), the simulation model of the snake robot is constructed, and the effectiveness of the basic motion control and autonomous step-climbing control strategy of the robot is verified through simulations and experiments.