Will do. You could probably recycle inserter sprites and animations initially.

Sure, I have no idea how something like this would need to be coded.

I agree with you on the implementation. Having a no protection armour with this item in a small grid.

I think it should be fairly early somewhere around medium armour and fast/long handed insterters. Logically it would be a backpack with an inserter basically.

Posted this in the Factorio subredit and was told to post here as well

I am thinking something along the lines of servo arm from Warhammer 40k or Dr. Octopus arms to auto-place blue prints early game a short distance from the player as a form of automated construction.