The Arduino has arrived! I chose the Arduino development platform due to its ease of interfacing with the components necessary for control of the arm and its massive user support base. The Arduino is based on an Atmel ATmega328 microcontroller, has a USB interface for programming, can control servos and integrate with sensors.
The current setup can take in analog values from our bend sensor and display the input as a graph.
Here is a photo of the current setup:
The bend sensor is a variable resistor. I have an 18kΩ resistor in series with it to create a voltage divider. The analog reading comes from the node connecting the bend sensor to the resistor (orange wire). The bend sensor has a resistance that varies between 8kΩ and 50kΩ.