That also works, but you can't really do that until like midgame unless you use some mods. You need to have at least red and green science production and have researched a fair bit of technology before you get robots. Then you need the chests which is another tech. But yeah, normally once I get the robots I setup an automation factory just to create robots and put them in the roboport.

Then I can start getting rid of belts by just having the robots do the work. Setup a hit load of worker bots on the perimeter to fight any of alien things and fix the damage automatically.

The robots change the approach massively. But, I also enjoy the process of creating belts that get consumed near perfectly so that I create the exact same amount of each science. That's just my OCD side of things though.