No the angle of attack sensor is an actual vane that turns around based on the airflow. There are several of them but this system is only connected to one of them. All the other important systems are connected to multiple redundant sensors and inputs, so it's strange this was designed with only one - seems to go against all principles of eliminating single point of failures...

one reason the batteries are starting to be sealed in in more devices is because then they don't need to put the batteries in a row like in a laptop battery pack. they can fit the individual cells where there is room inside the unit, using the space more efficiently.

It's built from the Robotis Bioloid kits. Very flexible, in two ways: the kits contain a lot of brackets and mechanics to build a lot of custom or existing projects, but more interestingly for the EE/CS crowd the servos referred to above are controlled by a 1 mbit/s asynchronous serial daisy-chain bus where you can access registers in each servo in a purely digital way. You can set target positions, read back temperature, position, current torque etc. This way you can use the servos not only as actuators but as force-sensors and for learning poses (you just drag around the robot extremities to the desired position and read out the position from the servos). So you eliminate a lot of accessory electronics normally needed for the traditional kind of servos in robotics.

Having said that, there are other modern servo systems with similar functionality on the market now. The Robotis servos are very strong but still has a plastic feel. I'd like exactly the same kit but with more metal in the parts I think..

I once interviewed for a job at a smaller company, and at the end of the interview the interviewer leaned forward and asked me with desperation in his voice "why do you want to start here", with the implication "are you mad??" hanging in the air.. Needless to say, I declined the job and that was probably wise.. Moral here is that some things you might not get a perfectly clean answer to, you might need to read between the lines when you visit the company, walk around, shake hands.. Listen to what the interviewers casually talk about during lunch etc..

Nobody expects the spanish inquisition!