Mining automation is increasingly moving into the earliest stage of the mining life cycle: exploration.
According to GlobalData’s Autonomous Mining: Unlocking Innovation and Competitive Advantage report, advances in AI, high-resolution geophysical surveys and 3D geological modelling are helping miners make faster, safer and more informed decisions, extending automation across the mining value chain.
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One technology driving that shift is drone-mounted geophysics. Equipped with high-resolution magnetometers, drones can survey prospective ground quickly and cost-effectively, while AI-assisted interpretation and 3D modelling help geologists identify drill targets before committing significant exploration capital.
American Mineral Resources, a brand under AMLM, is applying this approach at its recently acquired Higginsville Gold Project in Western Australia (WA). Located within the Southern Norseman-Wiluna Greenstone Belt, just 9km from the historic Higginsville Mine, the four-tenement project sits in a proven gold district with extensive historical drilling, rock chip sampling and existing infrastructure.
Higginsville’s geology makes it well suited to magnetic surveying. Gold mineralisation in the region is closely associated with major shear zones and fault structures, which magnetometry can map beneath shallow cover, allowing explorers to refine targets before drilling.
CEO Ryan Cunningham explains how drone-mounted magnetometry, AI-assisted data interpretation and geological expertise are being combined to guide exploration at Higginsville, and why digital technologies are changing not only how mines operate but how they are discovered.
Alejandro Gonzalez (AG): How much has exploration changed during your career?
Ryan Cunningham (RC): The transformation has been extraordinary. When I started out, exploration was almost entirely boots on ground; people were relying on hand samples, paper maps and expensive fixed-wing geophysical surveys that took months to commission and even longer to interpret. Today, a small team can deploy a drone magnetometry system over a target area in days, process the data in the cloud overnight and have AI-assisted anomaly maps ready before the field crew has left site.
What hasn’t changed is the geology. The rocks don’t care about the technology, you still need experienced geologists who understand structural controls, mineralisation styles and the regional context. What has changed is how fast and how cheaply we can screen ground and prioritise targets before we put a drill bit in. That is a genuine step-change in capital efficiency, and for a company like American Mineral Resources, where we are managing a portfolio across multiple continents, that matters enormously.
AG: How central is magnetic surveying to a modern gold exploration programme?
RC: Magnetics is often the first geophysical tool you reach for in an Archaean greenstone setting. Gold mineralisation in these terranes is almost always structurally controlled; you are looking for shear zones, faults and lithological contacts and magnetic data is exceptionally good at mapping those features, even under cover. It is cost-effective, non-invasive and the datasets integrate cleanly with geology and geochemistry. For greenstone gold, it is close to indispensable.
AG: What geological features are you hoping magnetics will reveal at Higginsville?
RC: Higginsville sits on the western limb of the Greater Eundynie Anticline, within 2km of the Zuleika Shear Zone – one of the major gold-controlling structures in the Eastern Goldfields of WA. The tenements host faulted, thrust-repeated mafic and ultramafic sequences that have been through at least two deformation events: compression and later fracturing.
What we are specifically targeting are the north-west-trending fault systems that run parallel to the Zuleika Shear, and the cross-cutting north-east faults. The nearby Challenge-Swordsman operation produced 250,000 ounces from this structural setting in the 1990s, and the Higginsville Mine itself has more than 1.1 million ounces of historical production. Magnetics will help us map those fault corridors precisely and identify where they intersect – those intersections are classically where gold deposits concentrate in this belt.
AG: Are you primarily mapping structures or searching for direct indicators of mineralisation?
RC: Primarily structures and lithological contacts. In Archaean greenstone gold, you are rarely seeing direct magnetic signatures from the gold itself – you are mapping the architecture that controlled fluid flow and gold deposition. The high-magnesium basalts, gabbros and komatiitic ultramafics all have distinct magnetic signatures, so we can use that contrast to reconstruct the structural picture beneath the shallow transported cover that limits surface geochemistry.
AG: Do you work with specialist geophysical contractors or do you bring capabilities in-house?
RC: At this stage we work with specialist contractors. The Australian Goldfields market has excellent geophysical service providers with deep experience in Archaean greenstone surveys, and it makes more sense to leverage that expertise than to replicate it in-house.
What we bring in-house is the geological interpretation – knowing what questions to ask of the data and how to integrate it with the structural and geochemical picture.
AG: How important are flight planning, terrain following and survey spacing in determining the quality of the final datasets?
RC: Critical. Survey line spacing determines the resolution of the anomalies you can resolve – if you are flying 200m lines, you will miss targets that 50m spacing would catch. Terrain following matters most in areas with significant topographic relief; in the relatively flat Goldfields of WA, it is less of an issue, but maintaining consistent sensor height is still essential for data quality. Good flight planning is where you lock in the data quality before a single metre has been flown.
AG: Do drone-mounted magnetometry results justify the cost?
RC: Absolutely, in most cases. The cost per line-kilometre for drone mag has come down dramatically, and the ability to fly safely at low altitude gives you better resolution for the same budget. The real question is whether the survey is designed well enough to answer the geological question you are asking. A cheap survey that doesn’t resolve your target is money wasted; a well-designed drone mag survey that identifies a drill target is one of the best returns on exploration capital you can get. Beats helicopters on cost hands down.
AG: Once the survey has been completed, what happens next?
RC: The raw data goes through processing – levelling, filtering and gridding – before you start interpretation. We look at total magnetic intensity and reduced-to-pole maps, then move into analytical signal and tilt derivative products that help resolve edges and contacts. That interpretation gets overlaid onto the geology and any existing geochemical data. Where anomalies align with favourable structural positions and geochemical signatures, you have a drill target.
AG: How much interpretation is automated and how much still depends upon experienced geologists?
RC: The processing is largely automated – the algorithms are well-established – but interpretation is still very much a human exercise. Pattern recognition in magnetic data requires understanding the regional geology, structural history and the mineralisation model for that specific terrane. AI tools are starting to assist with anomaly detection, but the experienced geologist sitting with the data asking “why does this anomaly exist, and does it make geological sense?” is still irreplaceable.
AG: How do you integrate magnetic datasets with historical drilling and geochemistry?
RC: It is a layered process. You start with magnetics as your structural framework, then drape the geochemistry and historical drill results on top. At Higginsville, the historical air-core programme – 152 holes drilled between 2011 and 2012 – gives us a subsurface geological picture we can tie to the surface magnetics. The best air-core result was 1m at 8.69 grams per tonne (g/t) of gold from 40m. Our job is to use the magnetic data to understand the structure controlling that grade and vector towards the most prospective ground.
AG: Where does AI provide the greatest value in exploration today?
RC: Right now, the clearest value is in data integration and target generation – taking large, heterogeneous datasets and identifying spatial correlations that human analysts might miss or take weeks to work through. AI is also showing real promise in drill core logging, where computer vision can identify lithological and structural features with a consistency that is hard to maintain over thousands of metres of core.
I am more cautious about AI as a primary decision-making tool for drill targeting. The geological reasoning still needs to be there – AI can surface candidates, but experienced geologists need to ground-truth them against the actual geology before capital gets committed.
AG: Is 3D inversion modelling becoming standard practice?
RC: Increasingly, yes. 3D inversion converts your magnetic data into a volumetric model of subsurface rock properties – a much more intuitive picture than 2D maps alone. Reliability depends heavily on the quality of input data and the geological constraints you feed in. When constrained by real drill data and good geological understanding, it can be a powerful predictor. Like any model, it is a hypothesis to be tested, not a fact to be trusted blindly.
AG: How extensive was the drone survey at Higginsville?
RC: To be transparent, American Mineral Resources acquired the Higginsville tenements in April 2026, and our own fieldwork programme is set to commence in the second half of 2026. The historical geophysical and geochemical work was conducted by previous tenement holders. Our immediate focus has been integrating that historical dataset, including the 152-hole air-core programme and existing geophysical coverage, to define priority drill targets before we go back into the field.
AG: What did the magnetic survey reveal?
RC: The historical data confirms that the tenements are positioned on a highly prospective structural corridor. The north-west-trending fault system parallel to the Zuleika Shear and the cross-cutting north-east faults are clearly expressed in the geophysical data. Rock chip sampling from the Rainbow Waters prospect returned nine samples above 1.2g/t gold with a peak of 8.26g/t, and surface prospecting has recovered nuggets up to 27oz, clear evidence that the structural and mineralisation system is active across the tenement package.
AG: How directly did the survey influence your drilling programme?
RC: The historical dataset has directly informed our target prioritisation. We have 164 historical drill-holes, multiple prospect areas with rock chip sampling and geophysical data to integrate. Our drilling programme, planned for the second half of 2026, will test the structural intersections identified in that combined dataset, particularly the north-west/north-east fault intersection zones that are the classic loci for gold deposition in this belt.
AG: What milestones should investors expect over the next 12–18 months?
RC: Completion of target definition and drill programme design; commencement of drilling at priority targets; and initial assay results. Higginsville is a cornerstone of American Mineral Resources’ global footprint – we now operate across 12 projects in seven jurisdictions on four continents, and the Eastern Goldfields is one of the world’s premier gold addresses.
AG: What evidence will convince the market this is commercially significant?
RC: In the Eastern Goldfields context, it starts with grade and continuity. A series of drill intersections showing high-grade mineralisation – consistent with the 8.69g/t air-core result and the rock chip data within a coherent structural corridor – would be a strong signal. From there, the market wants to see those intersections joined into a resource: continuity along strike and at depth. The Zuleika Shear Belt has produced multi-million-ounce camps [districts] and demonstrating that Higginsville has access to that same system would be a significant re-rating catalyst.
The regional context at Higginsville is compelling. Beta Hunt – home to Westgold’s (formerly Karora Resources) celebrated Father’s Day Vein, which yielded some of the highest-grade gold specimens ever recovered from a modern mine – sits approximately 100–150km to the north, within the same Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt that hosts our Higginsville tenements. Both camps share the same Archaean structural corridor and the same deep-seated fault architecture that has made the Eastern Goldfields of WA one of the most consistently gold-endowed terranes on earth.
The proximity of world-class discoveries like the Father’s Day Vein is not coincidental; it reflects the fertility of the belt itself, and reinforces our conviction that Higginsville’s structural position, on the western limb of the Greater Eundynie Anticline and adjacent to the Zuleika Shear Zone, represents a genuinely high-quality exploration address.
Ultimately, the market responds to drill results. Our job is to make sure the holes are well-targeted enough to tell a clear story.
