Thomas Endres

Managing Partner
TNG Technology Consulting GmbH
Germany

About

Thomas Endres is a Managing Partner at TNG Technology Consulting in Munich. Besides his normal work for the company and the management of client projects, he creates various prototypes, including real-time deepfakes, AI for generating presentations, and various robotics showcases. He works on applications in the field of AI, robotics, AR/VR, and teleoperation. Furthermore, he is involved in open-source projects. Thomas studied Computer Science at TU Munich and is a passionate software developer. As an Intel Software Innovator and Black Belt, he presents new technologies such as AI, AR/VR, and robotics worldwide. For this, he has received awards, including a JavaOne Rockstar Award and several Best Speaker Awards.
Talk

Skill issue: Teaching robots to play Counterstrike with imitation learning

AI, Robotics, Gaming, Robot Foundation Model, Imitation Learning, Gr00t
Have you ever wished you had an equal who could play Counter-Strike just as well as you? Thanks to recent developments in Robot Foundation Models (RFMs), robots can learn how to play video games just like you, imitating your best and worst behaviours. In this talk, Thomas Endres and Jonas Mayer show how to use imitation learning to teach an RFM to play arbitrary games. They draw first blood with an introduction to Robot Foundation Models. Attendees will learn how they work, what kind of data they are designed to process, and how that makes NVIDIA’s GR00T perfect for playing video games. After that, they quick-scope the concept of imitation learning, what kind of data they need to train their GR00T model, and how they can collect it from games. Finally, they tell the story of leveling up the model from total noob to global elite – one failure at a time – and share all the things they learned along the way.Throughout the talk, Thomas and Jonas include live demos in their slides. To close the game, they challenge one member of the audience to beat GR00T live on stage in a 1v1.