You're right about thise (predictive maintenance, IIoT applications, etc.) but mobile robots have probably the simplest implementation of a fully generated path program of all the types of robots out there.
In regards to your ideas about using AI/DL to generate process without programming, ROS-Industrial recently did a project with MTConnect focused on enabling machine-to-machine communication in a machine-tending application. ROS presented at IMTS 2018, showing a UR5 robot, a cnc mill and a CMM, all pinging each other to start and change tasks (eg. the cnc program is done, so the robot opens door and takes part, puts it in CMM and CMM program starts). The robot's motions were not programmed, the entire cell was simulated. I could see how AI/DL could be used to optimize processes like this between machines.
ROS + MTConnect study: https://rosindustrial.org/news/2013/11/9…ogram-completes