A drone (UAV, unmanned aerial vehicle) is no longer a toy, it is gaining bigger and bigger terrain in the industry as an everyday working tool. Equipped with sensors, thermal cameras, components and system software it most likely will be part of the solutions that continues streamlining the mining operations in the future. Signals from sensors attached on drones and on other mining equipment’s like mining vehicles creates the conditions for analyzing possible risks and give advice on how to act. The experimental drone study conducted at an open pit mine at Aitik, Boliden (see Figure 1) in Sweden will be presented in this paper. Aitik is today the world's most efficient copper (Cu) open pit mining operation. The authors propose decision trees to support and enable the transformation into a completely autonomous mining operation. In combination with deep learning (DL), pattern recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) applications, creates the puzzle pieces to support mining operations to become even more efficient.