The power head is the key part of the rock breaking work of the raise boring machine. Because the power head cannot adjust speed in time with the change of complex rock stratum, it leads to high failure rate, low work efficiency and even accidents, so it is urgent to improve the controllability of the power head. In this paper, the electro-hydraulic coupling mathematical model of the power head is established by using the characteristic equations of dynamics and hydraulic components, and the control strategy of the fractional electro-hydraulic drive system of the power head is proposed; Genetic algorithm (GA), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and whale algorithm (WOA) are used to adjust the parameters of FOPID, so as to improve the control effect of electro-hydraulic system; The results show that the step response of WOA-FOPID control strategy is also better than that of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO). It can reach a stable state in 0.02 seconds, and the overshoot is only 0.12137%; The test verifies the correctness of the adaptive control and simulation results of the power head, which can effectively improve the adaptability of the power head to complex coal seams.