英国广播公司:戴尔公司的研发部门称,该公司或将在2017年推出新的应用来"读心情".

BBC News: The head of Dell's new research and development division has said the company could release a mood-reading application as soon as 2017.

Jai Menon told the BBC that Dell Research was working on software for existing brain activity headsets that would accurately identify a wearer's emotional states.

He added that he believed such tech had uses in both the office and home. But some experts are sceptical about the project.

Dell is not the only major tech company to investigate the idea.

Microsoft has announced a series of mood-reading research projects, including Moodscope - software to infer a user's mental state from their smartphone use - and a "smart bra" that monitors heart and skin activity to detect stress and emotions.

IBM has tested uses for brain-monitoring gear at its research base in Hursley, England. And the video games company Valve also experimented with building sensors into a controller that would adapt gameplay to the player's body state, but later abandoned the idea.

Mr Menon said the current version of the software being tested was only able to correctly identify a headset wearer's mood about half of the time, but added he expected the figure would improve.