[en] Highlights: •FMEA summarizes the previous research works on in-vessel manipulator. •Failure recovery solution for serial link manipulator structure is provided. •Dual-drive push rod for tokamak in-vessel servo drive application is presented. •Computer simulation of in-vessel deployment process helps evaluate the proposal. -- Abstract: The Robotics Institute of SJTU has been involved in the development of an in-vessel maintenance operation manipulator system for China’s Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) since 2007. Previous work primarily focused on the basic operating principle and extreme environment endurance. In this paper, the failure recovery feature is introduced for the first time for an in-vessel manipulator system. Based on a summary of previous research, we propose a new serial link structured manipulator with failure recovery ability. The main structure of the new manipulator is presented, including the baking cask, manipulator deployment platform, serial link manipulator main body and dual-drive push-rod structure, which gives the manipulator its failure recovery ability. Additionally, the manipulator in-vessel deployment process is simulated on a computer, and basic kinematics analysis is performed to evaluate the feasibility of the proposal.