A 100mph basketball hoop you can't miss a shot in

He doesn't need to know the anchor positions accurately - this was extra work he didn't need to do because he has feedback on the hoop position (via the cameras), so even very rough measurements will be fine.

The 'cable slack takeup' devices are also unnecessary because that can be done in software - you can put a virtual spring in the motor control feedback loop to make it act as springy or rigid as you like.

I can imagine the need for both came about from previous (unseen) design iterations that had low frame rate visual feedback and motors without feedback at all.

> Why would a tape measure not be enough?

Tape measures are bendy and would require keeping / knowing the right angles even if the walls and floor are not completely straight. Then you get measurement error on top (both in the wall plane coordinates and how far does the attachment bit sticks out) that skews everything a bit.

He could have gotten a sponsor, or just didn't care about that part of the problem.

Sometimes the rabbit holes you might encountered aren't interesting.

These motors won't be at full power for more than 100 milliseconds at a time anyway. It's fine to overload regular outlets by 10x for 100ms - and the specs of breakers even specifically allow for this use case.

Big appliances like air conditioners, especially old non-inverter ones, will usually do that.