Technical wizardry is a mainstay of most films about soldiers, spies and other defenders of all that’s good and right. It also has a significant part to play in the real world inhabited by our defence forces and some of the UK’s biggest businesses.

But the intensive research and development involved in creating kit for the military can also have interesting civilian applications.

Damian Bond, the chief executive of ProKyma, is using defence-led research to reduce the time it takes doctors to identify infection and illness. At the moment, scientists use a number of different and frequently lengthy techniques to test samples for bacteria or other substances. Defence researchers are working in this area because developing a test that allows a quick, accurate result regarding, say, the presence of anthrax or ricin in soil has obvious usefulness in the event of a dirty bomb or other chemical or biological attack.

Bond, who is adapting these ideas for medical use, says that at the moment it can, for example, take hospitals anything from a day to two weeks to identify sepsis – an infection of the blood – and up to six weeks to definitively diagnose TB. However, doctors who suspect sepsis need to treat patients with antibiotics immediately, while the sooner that patients with TB start treatment the less likely it is that they will infect other people. This means that by the time the test results arrive, they’re too late.

“We want to get the answers in a time that allows proactive treatment... rather than being one step behind the infection,” Bond says.

Adam Dillon, a systems engineer, was always interested in defence-related technology. He researched medical imaging for his masters degree in physics but since joining QinetiQ’s graduate scheme two and a half years ago he has worked on projects covering everything from air-to-air missiles to display technology.

One of his projects involved developing night-vision technology so that helicopter pilots are able to fly not just in clear conditions but also in smoke, fog or the darkness of a desert night. Infra-red and millimetre-wave technology – which detects electromagnetic radiation and can penetrate smoke and fog – is used to help the pilot to “see” the path ahead. It can be combined with the aircraft’s GPS and database information to display the pilot’s path and the terrain below.

In addition to the military applications, the technology could also be useful for fire, police and rescue services.

“The best part of my job is working with the latest technology developing things that will make a difference on the front line, whether that’s more accurate targeting or helping search and rescue missions,” Dillon says.

While some of Dillon’s work is already in use in the field, Dr Holger Krapp’s research is at a much earlier stage. Krapp, a senior lecturer at Imperial College London, is investigating the way in which brains use sensory information to control motor action. Put simply, we are able to turn on a switch that tells us to walk; what we see, feel and hear then affects how we do it and the course that we take.

Krapp is studying insects so that he can identify how brains do this. He then wants to apply those biological principles to a man-made gadget so that, for example, it would be possible to tell a flying robot where it was supposed to go, turn on its “move” switch and then let it use sensory information to work out how to get there safely without the need for humans to constantly monitor its progress.

“There are a huge variety of applications and one that I am working on is how we can use these general principles... to control unmanned [military] vehicles or, in the civilian world, to build new sensors that help cars to avoid crashes,” he says. It could also have medical applications, such as in the creation of an endoscope that “knows” how to avoid piercing the walls of blood vessels.

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