In early March of this year, our staff, Professor Krzysztof Szabat and Dr. Karol Wróbel, visited Keio University in Tokyo. They were invited by Professor Seiichiro Katsura. For several years, we have been developing international scientific cooperation with him and his colleagues, which has resulted in several scientific publications and four tutorials organized at international scientific conferences.

The plan for the visit mainly included:

• participation in the International Symposium on Applied Abstraction and Integrated Design. During the Symposium, Professor Krzysztof Szabat gave a plenary lecture entitled "Damping of the torsional vibrations using classical and novel control algorithms," for which he received the Excellent Talk award. On the other hand, Dr. Karol Wróbel chaired a session entitled "Innovative System Design.
• a tour of University Keio (including laboratories in robotics, mechatronics, bioengineering and artificial intelligence) and Tokyo and its awakening spring.
• visit to Katsura Laboratory. Consultation of individual solutions, scientific discussion. An interesting aspect of the visit was the demonstration of vibration damping solutions developed for electric drives at WUST and used in robot control systems.
• talks on further cooperation. Issues of short- as well as long-term exchange of doctoral students and employees were discussed.

There was also discussion of the possibility of our employees applying for Guest or Visiting Professor status at Keio University and conducting joint doctoral theses.

Professor Seiichiro Katsura has announced a visit to our Department.

[KS]