A wearable, voice-activated device that can recognize human emotions is being developed by Amazon.com, Inc. The gadget being marketed as a health and wellness product is being jointly developed by the Alexa voice software team and Lab126, which created the hardware for Amazon’s Echo smart speaker and Fire phone.

The device is designed such that the emotional state of the wearer can be perceived by it on hearing his/her voice, using the microphones integrated with the software. The device is to be used through a smartphone app. A person familiar with the program mentioned that the technology aims to be able to advise the wearer on ways to interact with others.

This project is code-named Dylan and its work was on-going recently, but whether this product would be commercially available is still unclear. Amazon provides its teams with a lot of room to experiment with products, many of which never make it to the market. Dylan is undergoing beta-testing stage, as mentioned by the source, but it is still unclear whether the testing is being done for the emotion-detecting software or prototype hardware, or both. There was no comment made by Amazon regarding the project.