Newbie here, muscle support

I just found the odrive and teallybknow nothing about programming, mechanical engineer. And bam building an iron man type of arm and would like to use a brushless motor to help the elbow joint. I was thinking a potimiter/encoder at the elbow to get position and control the motor and provide extra strenght. Would I need to do this through an arduio to the odrive? I have the mechanical parts down but all the programming really makes my brain hurt.