[robryk]

I don't understand what happens when the sensor is bent in more than one location.

At the beginning you mention a ToF sensor, which made me think that you're looking at reflections from the bends and measuring distance to them, but this seems not to be the case. ISTM that if you bend the sensor in two places, you'll simply get the sum of the logattenuations from both. If we assume that the "strength" of the bend continuously changes attenuation, ISTM that you need as many strands as there are gap locations to be able to disambiguate between any two sets of bends.

Am I misreading something or is this intended to operate in cases where we know only one bend is present?

[mariusor]

In the paragraph "Visualization of the OptiGap Sensor System" looks like the gap pattern from multiple sensors is providing a unique signature that can be translated into the exact location on the length of the sensors. The mechanism for translating the wave forms to actual location seems to be based on a bayesian model, according to the "Realtime Machine Learning on a Microcontroller" paragraph.