Have you tried looking at the output of the StateTree Debugger when running this in PIE? From your StateTree image, it appears that the tree will fail as it cannot find a valid leaf state to enter from the condition. On the first run of the tree, the global task may not have the data ready for when the condition is checked. StateTree does not run the corresponding task to the output being used when evaluating the condition. It is looking for output to already be present. If you add a leaf state to idle in your tree and transition when a candidate is found or after a delay, does the tree move to the Smart Object slot that was claimed?
-James