Factorio Forums

It isn't yet possible to fully automate the research as the purple science packs need the alien artifacts from alien bases. This could be done if the logistic bots could take items from players inventories because then all you would need is a logistic requester chest, requesting alien artifacts from the players inventory, hooked up to a crafter to make the purple science pack.One problem would be other items being taken from the inventory for other recipes. So instead of using the normal requester chests you could add another chest to request things specifically from the players inventory or add an option for the items to be taken from the inventory in the requester chests.

There's already the player's logistics inventory. Maybe if you could lock items like in the quickbar: If you middle mouse click on a slot you can choose an item that is automatically moved to your logistics inventory whenever you gather it.

There are researchable logistics trash slots. If you put items in them, they will be taken from you and put into the network.
So the function is basically already there; The only thing you have to do is to move the artifacts from the main inventory into the trash slot(-s).

With the AutoTrash mod, this is fully automateable. I think AutoTrash (or similar) should be in Vanialla, cause it is really useful.