This volume contains the proceedings of the 7th KES Conference on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems – Technologies and Applications (KES-AMSTA 2013) held on May 27–29, 2013 in Hue city, Vietnam. The conference was organized by KES International and its Focus Group on Agent and Multi-agent Systems, and Hue University, Vietnam.

Following the success of previous KES Symposia/Conferences on Agent and Multi-Agent Systems – Technologies and Applications, held in Wroclaw, Poland (KES-AMSTA 2007), Incheon, Korea (KES-AMSTA 2008), Uppsala, Sweden (KES-AMSTA 2009), Gdynia, Poland (KES-AMSTA 2010), Manchester, UK (KES-AMSTA 2011), and Dubrovnik, Croatia (KES-AMSTA 2012), this conference continues to provide an internationally respected forum for scientific research in the technologies and applications of agent and multi-agent systems.

The field of agent and multi-agent systems is concerned with the development and evaluation of sophisticated, AI-based problem-solving and control architectures for both single-agent and multi-agent systems. Current topics of research in the field include, among other, agent-oriented software engineering, beliefs engineering, desires and intentions representation, agent co-operation, co-ordination, negotiation, organization and communication, distributed problem solving, specification of agent communication languages, formalization of ontologies and conversational agents. Special attention is paid to the feature topics: Intelligent technologies and applications in the area of e-health, social networking, self-organizing systems, economics and trust management.

KES-AMSTA 2013 features a number of keynote talks, oral presentations, and invited sessions, closely aligned to the theme of the conference. The conference attracted a substantial number of researchers and practitioners from all over the world who submitted their papers for the main track covering the methodology and applications of agent and multi-agent systems, two special sessions on specific topics within the field, and a half day workshop for early career stage researchers.

The main track streams, covering the methodology and applications of agents and multi-agent systems, includes sessions on: Multi-Agent Systems Design and Implementation, Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation, Coordination, Cooperation and Teamwork, Agent-Based Optimization, Web Services and Semantic Web, Agent Theories, Models and Communication, and Social and Business Issues.

In addition to the main tracks of the conference two invited sessions are hosted: Intelligent Agents with Semantic Technology (IAST 2013), and Computational Intelligence for Business Collaboration (CIBC 2013). On the final day of the conference the workshop entitled New Directions in Agents Research is held.

Submissions to KES-AMSTA 2013 came from 20 countries. Each paper was peer reviewed by at least two members of the International Programme Committee and International Reviewer Board. In all, 44 best papers were selected for oral presentation and publication in the proceedings volume of KES-AMSTA 2013.

The papers presented during the conference highlight new trends and challenges in agent and multi-agent research. We hope that these results will be of value to the research community working in the fields of artificial intelligence, collective computational intelligence, robotics, dialogue systems and, in particular, agent and multi-agent systems, technologies and applications.

We would like to express our sincere thanks to the KES-AMSTA 2013 General Chair and KES-AMSTA Symposium Series and Focus Group on Agent and Multi-agent Systems Chair, Ngoc Thanh Nguyen from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. Since the first KES-AMSTA conference in 2007, each year his work and involvement in the organization of KES-AMSTA series conferences has contributed to ensure high quality of these events.

We are very grateful to the keynote speakers, Andrzej Szalas, University of Warsaw, Poland, and Arkady Zaslavsky, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Australia, for their interesting and informative talks of the world-class standard.

Our thanks are due to all International Programme Committee members for their valuable efforts in the review process, which helped us to guarantee the highest quality of selected papers for the conference. Thanks are also due to several additional reviewers, who contributed to the conference success. Our special gratitude is also directed to the Invited Session Chair, Linh Anh Nguyen, and organizers and chairs of invited sessions, Trong Hai Duong, Jason J. Jung, and Hanh H. Hoang, for their valuable contribution.

We extend our thanks to main organizers and sponsors, KES International and Hue University, Vietnam. Our special thanks go to the Organizing Chair, Hanh H. Hoang, and all members of Local Organizing Committee for their excellent efforts in the organizational work.

Finally, we cordially thank all the authors for their valuable contributions and the other participants in this conference. The conference would not have been possible without their support.

March 2013

Dariusz Barbucha

Manh Thanh Le

Robert J. Howlett

Lakhmi C. Jain