Gesture controlled screens are already catching on with home televisions and Kinect powered consoles responding to a regal wave from the couch. Now mobiles have the chance to bend to your finger flipping will thanks to 3D Air-Touch.

Researchers at the National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan have created a mobile display that can see you finger accurately. More so than the page swiping Air Gesture controls of Samsung from the sounds of it.

3D Air-Touch uses optical sensors embedded in the display pixels to pick up your finger moving in the air above it. A 3D image can be manipulated as if it were really floating in front of the screen. Of course it won't actually be displayed off the screen, sadly. But with displays coming to our eyes soon, with the like of Google Glass, augmented reality controls may be crucial.

READ: Atheer Labs has nailed smart glasses with on-lens 3D displays and gesture controls

The 4-inch display uses an infrared backlight and angular scanning illuminator edges to provide lighting. This offers a 3D fingertip maximum error measure of 0.45cm. Considering 2D touch systems require a 0.5cm maximum error positioning that's an impressive breakthrough. But this will be limited to a single finger, like Leap Motion, when it's initially released. Work is being done to overcome this issue.

Since this has already been built, researchers are confident it will be making its way into devices soon. Pocket-lint was told by a Stream, the glasses free 3D screen manufacturer, that we'll be seeing glasses free 3D screens (that actually work this time) on mobiles soon. Yet another step closer to waving goodbye to the keyboard and mouse once and for all.

READ: Stream Ultra-D 4K glasses-free TVs coming 2014, smartphones and tablets to follow