Utility tunnel has the adverse condition of large-tonnage bias load hoisting,and it is prone to dangerous accidents.To ensure safety and stability of utility tunnel section hoisting,and to improve synchronous control accuracy of hydraulic cylinder groups of the special spreader,a synchronous control strategy combining IGWO-BP-PID (improved gray wolf optimization-BP neural network-PID) and state difference feedback was studied.Based on the analysis of structure and hydraulic principle of the spreader,the hydraulic cylinders were divided into two groups longitudinally.Gray wolf position was updated in the GWO to achieve optimization of BP-PID parameters by IGWO.Then,three controllers were used to make the system control analyses,and the control effect of IGWO-BP-PID was verified.Finally,synchronous control strategy combining IGWO-BP-PID and state-difference feedback was applied to jointly simulate hydraulic cylinder groups in AMESim/Simulink,and the comparative analysis of the simulation and field test data was carried out.The research results show that IGWO-BP-PID controller has no overshoot and has better control effect.Compared with the conventional PID control,using the proposed method,the oscillation adjustment time of the hydraulic cylinder groups is shortened,and the synchronous control accuracy is higher.The field test verifies the effectiveness of synchronous control strategy of utility tunnel spreader,which meets the engineering construction requirements.