The Nibelungen-III series Technical Body is an excellent example of the blurring of the lines between operator and tool in the early 2090s. While they give the appearance of life, they are in fact completely nonbiological. The N-IIIs are neither autonomous entities nor are they pure telepresence puppets. Instead they are dual hosts for both a telepresence operator and a semiautonomous expert system. The expert system is not a true AI, but is a sort of sub-Turing learning system designed to enhance the abilities of a trained operator. A horse and rider analogy is useful, if incorrect in certain details.

It's often assumed that the small stature of the III series is to enable them to operate in tight spaces more easily, but this is incorrect. The N-II before it had a human appearance, but this caused unforeseen problems in the field. It was found that making the Technical Bodies *too* human tended to create an empathic bond in about 5% of the operators in the sample study. This in turn caused glitches in the system software. While not common, these difficulties prompted a number of revisions when the N-IIIs were released.

Usually referred to as 'goblins', the Nibelungen-III was groundbreaking in that it was one of the first *industrial* Remote Bodies to be imagineered to any degree. Human and animal paradigms for RB designs had been most common until then, but it was found that the learning system and the operator worked most efficiently together when the RB evoked only certain narrow classes of empathic response.

The physical appearance of this entire generation of of RBs was heavily influenced by both the Neo-Romantic and Christian Transocialist design movements. These saw even the most mundane aspects of engineering colored heavily by the 22nd century longing for what it saw as the simple carefree purity of the 20th. Customization of the N-III is both common and affordable, as well as fashionable. The depicted example is in current service on Venus with an art collective.