Pilbara iron ore giant Rio Tinto has completed the rollout of its automated Pilbara rail network.

The $1.3 billion rollout has taken just eight months.

Rio Tinto has finished deploying its automated train network in the Pilbara. Rio Tinto

The miner got approval from the national rail safety regulator to test "the world's largest robot" in May and conducted its first fully loaded automated mine-to-port rail journey in July.

It has gradually stepped up the number of heavy-haul journeys, with more than 1 million kilometres now travelled autonomously.

Rio Tinto has about 200 locomotives running on more than 1700 kilometres of track, which transport ore from its 16 mines to four Pilbara port terminals.

Every locomotive and line has been automated apart from the shorter Robe River line in the western Pilbara. The trains are controlled by the company's remote operations centre in Perth.

Rio Tinto began looking at automation 10 years ago to drive efficiencies in its production and boost margins.

In 2013 Rio Tinto employed about 400 drivers with some being paid up to $240,000 a year.

The Autohaul program has drawn the ire of unions worried about its impact on train driver jobs but the company said it had not made any forced redundancies and did not expect to make any in 2019.

On average Rio Tinto trains travel 800 kilometres on return journeys. A typical journey will take about 40 hours.

Rio's rail, port and core services boss Ivan Vella said early results were positive.

"It’s been a challenging journey to automate a rail network of this size and scale in a remote location like the Pilbara, but early results indicate significant potential to improve productivity, providing increased system flexibility and reducing bottlenecks,” he said.

"The safe and successful deployment of across our network is a strong reflection of the pioneering spirit inside Rio Tinto."

Autohaul locomotives are fitted with on-board cameras that are constantly monitored from the operations centre.

The slow march

Automation is rife within all large scale iron ore operations in the Pilbara but it is yet to reach WA's other commodities.

Rio, Fortescue Metals Group, BHP and Roy Hill are all adding automated trucks to their fleets. Some are also using automated exploration drill rigs.

University of Western Australia mineral economist and mining expert Professor Allan Trench said it will be some time before gold and other metal miners implement automation on a large scale.

"I think it will be staged and it will depend on the type of mining and type of commodity," he said.

"In general terms it will be faster in open pits and bulk commodities and slower in underground environments and precious metals and base metals.

"I think the iron ore miners are substantially ahead of the gold miners in WA.

"Gold mines can be complex underground rabbit warrens that are fiddly and they are a bit tougher to automate as opposed to 1700 kilometres of rail to get to a very large port."