Amazon working wrist-worn ‘human emotion reader’
The gadget may ultimately be able to advise the wearer how to interact more effectively with others — and recommend what products to buy
Seattle — Amazon is developing a voice-activated wearable device that can recognise human emotions. The wrist-worn gadget is described as a health and wellness product in internal documents reviewed by Bloomberg. It’s a collaboration between Amazon Lab126, the hardware development group behind Amazon’s Fire Phone and its Echo smartspeaker, as well as the Alexa voice software team. Designed to work with a smartphone app, the device has microphones paired with software that can discern the wearer’s emotional state from the sound of their voice, according to the documents and a person familiar with the program. Eventually, the technology could be able to advise the wearer how to interact more effectively with others, the documents show. It’s unclear how far along the project is, or if it will ever become a commercial device. Amazon gives teams wide latitude to experiment with products, some of which will never come to market. Work on the project, codenamed Dylan, was happening recently...
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