A uniform, decentralized, potential-field based approach to dispersing a team of robots to explore an area quickly.

Leverages knowledge of the overall bounds of the area to be explored and includes a monotonic coverage factor in the field equations to avoid minima.

Allows robot team members to become disconnected from and reconnected with the team and ongoing dispersion strategy.

Introduces performance metrics for team speedup and efficiency in the case of adding members to teams.

Presents both simulation and experimental robot results.