I think there is no place for RPA in Industry 4.0 or any kind of high tech architectures (ML/cloud/insert buzzword here). If you are using RPA, it means that your IT infra does not even have (usable) APIs to begin with and you have to resort to mouse-clicking and other hacky approaches offered by RPA. First, get rid of software that holds your data hostage and cannot be controlled via APIs before you start thinking about “AI”.
P.S. Congratulations on paper acceptance!