Connecting your robot vacuum to Amazon's Alexa voice assistant enhances your hands-free cleaning experience. Once set up, you won't need to open an app on your smartphone or press a button on the bot to get the cleaning party started. With a voice assistant at your fingertips, just say a command and your bot will do the trick.
Most robot vacuum manufacturers work with Alexa for voice control, although some have more features than others. The basics usually include start, stop, pause, and dock (or return home). But the premium experience includes specific room cleaning commands – so, for example, you can ask Alexa to tell your robot to clean the kitchen and living room. This is only available on vacuums with the ability to map your home, like the Roborock S7.
Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / I/O Means
Whatever robot vacuum you have, the experience of connecting it to Alexa so you can control it with the voice assistant is similar.
Some manufacturers, such as Roborock, iRobot, Eufy and Ecovacs, have made it possible to start pairing with Alexa from their apps, simplifying the process when you first set up the vacuum. If so, go to your user profile in your robot's app, select Voice control, smart home, or Smart Integrations option, choose Connect to Amazon Alexa and follow the above steps from the Discover Devices indicate.
Once your robot vacuum is connected to Alexa, common commands to operate it with voice include (check with your vacuum's manufacturer for exact wording):
Depending on the robot vacuum you are using, other commands may be available. These will be displayed when you link it to Alexa. (Pro Tip :take a screenshot of this page so you can reference it until you get used to the phrases.)
When you use voice to control your robot vacuum with Alexa, some robots may open their own voice skill and ask for additional guidance. For example, if you have more than one Roomba vacuum in your home, you will receive a prompt that opens the iRobot skill and asks you to select a number to choose the correct robot – for example, “For Roomba s9, say 1; for Roomba i7, say 2. If you have a Brava Jet mop robot, it may also ask you if you want this robot to clean after vacuuming is finished. You can override this by using this phrase to initially choose the right robot:"Alexa, ask Roomba to have [name of vacuum] Start cleaning"
Robots with mapping capabilities may have the ability to follow a command to clean a specific room or area. These commands include:
Some other options your bot might have include the ability to make announcements to an Echo device when it needs attention. This lets your robot tell you what it's doing via Alexa, announcing things like when it needs help or when it's finished a cleaning job. You can turn this feature on or off and choose which Echo devices make the announcements in the robot settings section in the Alexa app.
Many robot vacuums work with Alexa Hunches and Routines so your robot can work based on actions you take (leaving the house) or actions in your smart home (ignoring an alarm on a device echo or when motion is or is not detected by a motion sensor).
To set up a routine involving your robot vacuum:
Alexa Intuitions is a feature that lets the artificially intelligent assistant make decisions about what you might need your smart home to do for you, based on your habits and routines. For example, it can use connected devices in your home — such as lights, thermostats, locks, switches, and outlets — to determine if you're away and tell your vacuum to clean when you're gone. Robots that currently work with Hunches include those from iRobot, Eufy, Wyze, Roborock, and Ecovacs.
To enable robot vacuum insights:
You can change Hunch settings at any time directly from your robot page in the Alexa app.
