Patent ID: 7826907

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving a user request into a coordinating device, wherein the user request requests a task to be performed by one or more of a plurality of electronic devices available ad-hoc; processing at said coordinating device a service description information for each of the one or more of the plurality of electronic devices available ad-hoc and identify functionally responsive combinations of electronic devices capable of servicing said user request; calculating a score for each of the functionally responsive combinations, said calculating using user preference information; configuring said available electronic devices of the functionally responsive combinations into an ad-hoc combination based on said calculated scores; and servicing said user request with said ad-hoc combination, wherein calculating the score for each of the functionally responsive combinations is calculated as: AS ⁡ ( A , AP ) = ∑ i = 1 n ⁢ sw i ⁡ ( D , AP ) * e ⁡ ( D i ) * DS i ⁡ ( D , DP i ) where: A is a particular functionally responsive combination; AP is a combination-level policy, wherein the combination-level policy indicates how the electronic devices are scored relative to each other; AS is a calculated score for the particular functionally responsive combination; n is a number of electronic devices that are included in said particular combination, wherein n is greater than one; sw i is a weight assigned to each device of type i according to said combination-level policy AP; DP is a device scoring policy based on the user preference information; DS i is an unweighted device score for each device D; and e(D i ) is a percentage indicating availability of said device D i , wherein the percentage is based on a status of said device D i .