A method for conducting a search of an area for targets by a number of vehicles. First each of the vehicles randomly disperses from the other vehicles. Then during an aggregate phase, each vehicle responds in a predesignated way to an encounter with one of the other vehicles. A number of specific search strategies may be followed which tend to direct the search in a particular designated direction or allow a successful searching vehicle to set the direction of the search. This method results in improved performance in conducting searches by robots or other vehicles.