One potential benefit of developing the automated solution is that life support is HEAVY. You can send up much larger payloads when you don't have to worry abou

One potential benefit of developing the automated solution is that life support is HEAVY. You can send up much larger payloads when you don't have to worry about keeping humans alive. Not to say that there aren't large drawbacks (huge amounts of R&D, for example). Robot space travelers are also relatively uninspiring.