Reliance Industries' Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gandhinagar, is aiming to be at par with the Indian Institutes of Technology in the next five years.

The institute, recently granted university status by the state government, also plans to concentrate more on research programmes and interact closely with various Reliance firms for knowledge-sharing.

"We hope the institute will be able to compete with the IITs in another five years. And then after another five years of efforts, we can make it a world-class institution," Arvind P Kudchadker, the director of the institute, said.

According to Kudchadker, efforts are on to develop IT-related courses for agriculture which will prepare IT personnel to equip farmers with agri-based information to improve their products. "We are giving much stress on research in the agri-based segments," he said.

"Our first interest in research is to utilise robots for disaster rescue and recovery by deploying robots at the disaster site, manmade or natural.

The robots would collect information and communicate it to human controller and a similar area is being developed is related to clearance of land mines, which claims large number of lives throughout the world," said Prabhat Ranjan, a professor at the institute.

"We are also working to develop fruit growth and maturity-sensing device to get a better grip of the quality of harvesting. We are also interacting with Reliance Agro-Initiative, of Jamnagar, to test and develop these technologies," Ranjan said.