A Study of the Effect of State Anxiety on Miners’ Situational Awareness of Remotely Piloted Extractor Machines

The level of situational awareness of coal mining machine operators significantly affects operational performance, which in turn is influenced by emotions such as state anxiety. In order to investigate the influence of state anxiety level on the situational awareness of remote-driving extractor operators, the State Anxiety Scale and SART Scale were used to conduct a remote-driving extractor situational awareness evaluation experiment with 60 subjects in a simulated extractor operation scenario. The results showed that there was a significant difference in the level of situational awareness among subjects at different levels of state anxiety, and that subjects at low levels of state anxiety would have a higher level of situational awareness, reduce the time to complete the task, and reduce the number of errors; Low situational awareness at high state anxiety levels makes it easy to make wrong judgments, increasing the time to complete the task as well as the number of errors. The results of the study can provide a theoretical basis and management approach for coal mining companies to manage operators’ anxiety and improve their work efficiency.