Roomba Gets Amazon Alexa-Powered Voice Control

Roomba vacuum cleaners just made a new friend: Amazon Alexa.

iRobot, the company behind Roomba, on Wednesday announced that its robotic vacuum cleaner now plays nice with Amazon's virtual assistant, which powers the company'due south Echo speakers. This ways, if y'all have an Alexa-enabled device plus a Roomba, you can now first, cease, and pause cleaning jobs with uncomplicated voice activated commands like "Alexa, ask Roomba to begin cleaning."

The new Alexa skill for Roomba vacuuming robots will be available in the US in the 2d quarter of the year, iRobot said. This characteristic will work with any continued Roomba vacuum, such as the Roomba 900 Serial.

You can also now learn more well-nigh cleaning jobs via the iRobot Dwelling app for iOS and Android devices. A new Clean Map feature will evidence you where the Roomba 900 Series cleaned upward, how long it spent on the job, and which areas of your flooring were the dirtiest. These "post-cleaning reports" will be available in the History tab of the app. Plus, the app volition also now ship you button notifications when the robot is finished cleaning.

Meanwhile, if you take an Amazon Echo device, you might be excited to hear that information technology can now connect to any Bluetooth speaker, co-ordinate to Pocket Lint. Previously, this feature was only available on the smaller Repeat Dot. As the site points out, this will permit you lot stream music from a speaker with amend audio quality than Echo while withal taking reward of the voice control features and other capabilities Alexa offers.

Virtually Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag's expert on fitness and smart domicile products. Teaching yoga for nearly 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, strength training machines, treadmills, and more. Angela too tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, just to proper noun a few.