The particularity of nuclear power plant environment requires that the nuclear power inspection robot must be remote control operation. The main purpose of the inspection robot is to carry out inspection, prevention, reporting, and safety emergency operation on the instruments, so as to provide guarantee for the safe operation of the nuclear power plant. Based on the representative configuration of nuclear power robot at home and abroad, this paper develops a small and lightweight nuclear power plant inspection robot, including walking mechanism, lifting mechanism, operating mechanism, image acquisition, information communication and control system, etc., to carry on the statics analysis to the key components of the inspection robot and verify that the stiffness and strength of the mechanical structure meet the requirements of lightweight design. Modal analysis is carried out to verify that the motor does not cause resonance when working. The kinematic model of the robot has been established and can provide the theoretical basis for the controller design. A hierarchical control system based on LabVIEW upper computer monitoring and control operation interface is established, which uses adaptive fuzzy Proportional Integral Derivative (PID) control to simulate the walking control, and then realizes the control of walking mechanism through software programming, and the adaptive fuzzy PID control has better effect than the conventional PID control. The S-type acceleration and deceleration algorithm is used to realize the accurate control of the position location of the lifting mechanism. Finally, combined with the experiment of 5MS robot comprehensive experimental platform, it is proved that the inspection robot can realize remote control function operation.