Process mining (PM) aims to construct, from event logs, process maps that can help discover, automate, improve, and monitor organizational processes. Robotic process automation (RPA) uses software robots to perform some tasks usually executed by humans. It is usually difficult to determine what processes and steps to automate, especially with RPA. PM is seen as one way to address such difficulty. This paper aims to assess the applicability of process mining in accelerating and improving the implementation of RPA, along with the challenges encountered throughout project lifecycle. A systematic literature review was conducted to examine the approaches where PM techniques were used to understand the as-is processes that can be automated with software robots. Seven databases were used to identify papers on this topic. A total of 32 papers, all published since 2018, were selected from 605 unique candidate papers and then analyzed. There is a steady increase in the number of publications in this domain, especially during the year 2022, which suggests a raising interest in the combined use of PM with RPA. The literature mainly focuses on the methods to record the events that occur at the level of user interactions with the application, and on the preprocessing methods that are needed to discover routines with the steps that can be automated. Important challenges are faced with preprocessing such event logs, and many lifecycle steps of automation projects are weakly supported by existing approaches suggesting corresponding research areas in need of further attention.

翻译：流程挖掘（PM）旨在从事件日志中构建流程地图，以帮助发现、自动化、改进和监控组织流程。机器人流程自动化（RPA）利用软件机器人执行通常由人类完成的部分任务。确定哪些流程和步骤适合自动化通常十分困难，尤其在RPA中。PM被视为应对这一难题的方法之一。本文旨在评估流程挖掘在加速和改进RPA实施方面的适用性，以及项目生命周期中遇到的挑战。通过系统文献综述，研究考察了运用PM技术理解可用软件机器人自动化的现状流程的方法。共检索七个数据库以识别相关论文，从605篇候选论文中筛选出32篇（均发表于2018年后）进行分析。该领域论文数量稳步增长，尤其在2022年，表明PM与RPA结合使用的兴趣日益增加。文献主要关注记录用户与应用交互层面事件的方法，以及发现可自动化步骤所需的数据预处理方法。这类事件日志的预处理面临重要挑战，而自动化项目生命周期的多数步骤在现有方法中支持不足，揭示了需进一步关注的研究方向。