A research group has developed an autonomous robotic team of devices that can be used at hazardous or difficult-to-reach sites to make surveys and collect data--providing more and faster insights than human beings are able to deliver. These robot teams--composed of autonomous devices that gather data on the ground, in the air, and in water--would be ideally suited for hazardous environmental situations and/or for holistic environmental surveys of ecosystems. An autonomous team like this could do a survey and rapidly sample what's in the air and the water so that people could be kept out of harm's way. In another context, the robots could provide a general survey of ecosystems, or they could look at situations such as harmful algal blooms in lakes. A recent demonstration in the field showed how the autonomous robotic team can rapidly learn the characteristics of environments it has never seen before. Researchers hope the robot team prototype can be a model for changing the methods that are used to survey disaster sites, waterways, and extreme environments.