Cobalt-rich crusts richly contains strategic metal cobalt,has highly exploiting value.But the exploition of cobalt-rich crust is more difficult because of the variation of its thickness and the complexity of seafloor microtopography.It is very important for the exploition of cobalt-rich crust to design an effective control system for cutting header to adapt to the microtopography of the cobalt-rich crust and develop a valid control strategy for the control system.The control system of a drum-type cutting head was designed and studied.The control system mainly consists of 5 units:hydraulic unit,microtopography-detecting unit,communication unit,control and monitoring unit and data storage unit.According to the needs of actual exploitation of deep sea cobalt-rich crust,a microcontroller and a monitor that are widely used to mining and excavating equipments are used to the control system.A parameter fuzzy self-adjusting PID controller has been designed for the control system.The cutting experiment of mimetic crust in a deepwater pool was carried out.The results showed that the compatibility of each unit of this system is very good,the control system of the mining device can adapt to the microtopography well.