Behind the scenes at Google I/O 2016

Google this week held its annual developer conference right next door to its headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., at the massive, storied Shoreline Amphitheatre. More than 6,500 people attended the outdoor keynote address, which felt a bit like an early morning rave, complete with thundering bass, trippy imagery and ambient sound.

At the registration desk, I/O attendees received all kinds of swag, including Google’s Cardboard VR headset, a water bottle, a head wrap, sunscreen and shades — omens of the heat that came later in the day.

A DJ was on stage at I/O to make sure attendees were awake with a heavy dose of techno and bass.

During the opening keynote, Google CEO Sundar Pichai introduced the company’s Google Assistant, a new platform that blends AI and machine learning to provide more contextual responses and automated action. “We want users to have an ongoing, two-way dialogue with Google,” he said. “We think of this as building each user their own individual Google.”

Google’s Vice President of Product Management Mario Queiroz revealed the Google Home voice assistant device during the opening I/O keynote. The device is expected to ship later this year, and it will compete directly with Amazon’s Echo assistant.

Clay Bavor, vice president of virtual reality at Google, said more than 50 million apps have been downloaded for Google Cardboard to date. He also announced an expansion of VR to Android and a new platform for high quality VR on mobile devices, called Daydream, that’s expected to be released this fall.

Once the morning keynote was a wrap, attendees clogged the aisles as they filtered out to the surrounding areas to check out special exhibits and demo booths.

Just a few minutes after the keynote ended, only a few brave souls remained in the amphitheatre’s seating bowl.

Google I/O attendees could cruise around parts of the event venue on colorful bikes.

Picture this: a robot, dancing on a swivel, picking up brushes at random while spraying various colors of paint at a large, rotating box rotating. That happened at I/O.

It’s unclear exactly what this wacky bus has to do with Google, or I/O, or developers, but it was outfitted to look like a wooden ship ready for some rough seas ahead.

Forget the wacky wooden bus. Google’s self-driving car prototype could take you wherever you need to go.

Google has packed I/O venues with creative ideas for a decade, but this year it took art exhibits to a new level, with installations like this colorful mirror setup.