One giant step in emotion-reading technology: Chinese scientists claim movement-based app can tell anger from happiness in users

Mainland scientists claim to have developed the world's first smartphone app that can detect emotions from body movements.

The research team, led by Professor Zhu Tingshao from the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Psychology, said the technology had a wide range of applications, such as a "smart bracelet" that could send an alert if a wearer became emotionally unstable.

The Android app could tell if the user was angry, happy or calm with up to 90 per cent accuracy by analysing variations in gait, the researchers said in a paper accepted by Human-Centred Computing, an international conference to be held in Sri Lanka in January.

The app was developed in collaboration with China Electronics Corporation, one of the country's biggest makers of telecom equipment.

Other emotion detection apps on the market identify specific emotions from voice patterns and facial expressions and require active engagement - such as a chat or a selfie - from the user.

Read more: Reading emotions

But the app built by Zhu's team could "generate daily, weekly or monthly emotion profile reporting how the emotion changes over time" using motion sensors already built into most smartphones to capture body movements.