To improve the efficiency of postdisaster victim detection and rescue, especially in narrow spaces and dangerous areas difficult for rescue personnel to reach, a small obstacle-crossing vehicle (OCV) with high-precision sensing ability and terrain motion adaptability is needed. To this end, we designed a novel adaptive OCV based on bionics for postdisaster detection and rescue work. The major work we have performed in this study includes the planning of bionic gaits, the motion analysis of the vehicle mechanism, the application of high-precision sensors in vehicles, the development of an adaptive compound control method, and the structural finite element simulation. Finally, the designed bionic OCV walking verification tests were carried out on seven different obstacle roadways, and satisfactory results were obtained. The feature of this study is a bionic OCV compound obstacle control method and strategy with high adaptability. The novelty of this study is that our proposed OCV bionic gait planning includes strategies to cope with the complex and changeable road terrain environment, and the proposed compound obstacle control method has the characteristics of high accuracy and strong adaptability in controlling OCV obstacle movement.