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It is the stuff that superheroes are made of.  But the power to see round corners could soon be yours.

British scientists are creating a camera that can peer round corners without the aid of a mirror.

By taking pictures at the speed of light, it should be able to reveal hidden objects – from people, to parked cars, to military tanks.

21st century periscope: The invention consists of a laser, a super-fast camera which sits beside it and a computer (gadget pictured)

It could be used by the Army to distinguish friend from foe, by rescue teams searching for survivors in collapsed buildings or mines, or simply by motorists who struggle to reverse park.

Inventor Jonathan Leach, of Edinburgh's Heriot-Watt University, said: 'It's very James Bond, it's very Superman.'

His invention consists of a laser, a super-fast camera which sits beside it and a computer.

To see something that is around a corner, the laser is pointed so that its light ricochets off a wall and onto the hidden object.

Some of this light will automatically bounce back off the object and back onto the wall and a tiny fraction will go back towards the camera.

A normal camera, such as one in a mobile phone, takes 30 shots a second.  

While this may seem fast, light travels so quickly that the reflected light would have time to shoot past the camera and travel to New York before phone took a single photo.

In contrast, the new camera takes 15billion shots a second, making it fast enough to catch the reflected light.

The technology could be used by the military (graphic, pictured), by rescue teams searching for survivors in collapsed buildings or mines, or simply by motorists who struggle to reverse park

And at ten times more sensitive than the human eye, it has no trouble detecting the faint reflection.

A computer then uses the amount of time the light spent travelling to the camera and the pattern of the reflections to work out the shape of the object and how far away it is.

Dr Leach said: 'You can work out from the unique way that light bounces of walls and comes to our camera, if it was a car, if it was a human, if it was a dog.

'Those different objects interact differently with light in a way that our camera can detect.

'In a similar sense, if an object is further away, light will take longer to come to our camera.  If an object is closer, it will take a shorter amount of time.'

Dr Leach, who is showcasing the equipment all week at the Royal Society's Summer Exhibition in London, said the camera could eventually be used by the military to tell ally from enemy.

Motorists could also use it to help with parking or tell them if there is a pedestrian round the corner.

However, his immediate goal is to prove the camera can actually see round corners.  Although all the science says it can, the proof will come next week when tests whether it can tell the difference between cut outs of the letters 'A' and 'B' hidden round a corner.