You don’t need empties anymore, you can rig a curve with bones.
It’s the same technique but ‘hook’ them to a control bone instead of an empty. That way they part of the same armature object and easily animated (rather than being seperate objects with non zero rest positions)
I did a really quick demo if this in the second Rigging stream earlier this year.
I can’t remember the time stamp but here’s the link https://cgcookie.com/live_streams/blender-rigging-tid-bits-2
(NOTE: I haven’t read the whole thread but some of the images are looking flipping fantastic. I’m just mentioning this in case I’m way off base with my answer)
