Overall, the results extend previous work in this area by providing empirical evidence from a hazardous, real-world mining environment showing how automation reshapes situation awareness, mental workload, communication patterns, and operational reliability. The findings highlight human-system issues unique to mining—such as infrastructure limitations (e.g., Wi-Fi dropouts) and inconsistent handovers—offering new insights into how automation affects health, safety, and well-being in practice. By unpacking these human factors challenges, the paper provides practical insights to this conference for designing safer automation workflows, enhancing communication structures, and supporting workers’ cognitive and social needs in modern mining operations. 6. CONCLUSION This study provides new insights into how automation influences situation awareness, communication, and mental workload in mining operations. The results show that operators develop their situation awareness through a hybrid process that integrates system-generated cues with human communication, but inconsistencies in handovers, limited sensory feedback, and infrastructure limitations—such as Wi-Fi dropouts—create vulnerabilities that can compromise safe performance. Mental workload perceptions varied among operators, highlighting that automation does not uniformly reduce cognitive demand and may increase monitoring fatigue in control-room environments. Automation also reshapes communication patterns, contributing to operator isolation and reduced interaction with underground crews and supervisors. Overall, these findings demonstrate that the transition to automated mining introduces not only technical changes but also significant human and organisational challenges. Addressing these challenges—by improving system reliability, strengthening communication practices, and supporting operators’ cognitive and social needs—is essential to ensure safe, healthy, and effective work in increasingly automated mining environments. REFERENCES Atkins, A., & Ritchie, M. (2019). Improving board assurance of technical and operational risks in mining. In (pp. 97-110): Australian Centre for Geomechanics, Perth. Bearne, G. (2014). Innovation in mining: Rio Tinto's Mine of the Future (TM) programme. In (Vol. 26, pp. 15-16). Burgess-Limerick, R. (2020). Human-Systems Integration for the Safe Implementation of Automation. Mining, Metallurgy & Exploration, 37, 1799-1806. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42461-020-00248-z Burgess-Limerick, R., Horberry, T., Lynas, D., Hill, A., & Haight, J. M. (2025). Human Systems Integration for Mining Automation. Chirgwin, P. (2021). Skills development and training of future workers in mining automation control rooms. Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 4, 100115. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chbr.2021.100115 28
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