Approaches presented herein enable maneuvering collaborative robots to rescue persons in a hydrological disaster. A plurality of robots are dispersed in a body of water to spread out and seek victims using cooperative foraging techniques within resource constraints. A location of victims located by a robot using sensing techniques is communicated to other robots. A situational assessment is performed using victim location information to determine a number of robots to deploy to the location. The deployed robots are directed to perform coordinated maneuvers to create a connected floatation unit to support floatation of victims for rescue.