I have tried every simple combo I have found but not sure how to do this. I even tried to simulate the home long press but you get google now voice, lookint at logcat it sho
So I've been trying to do the same thing, and just discovered something when I'm trying to launch the Assistant with an Intent like this:
Intent launchIntent = new Intent(Intent.ACTION_VIEW);
launchIntent.setPackage("com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox");
launchIntent.setClassName("com.google.android.googlequicksearchbox", "com.google.android.apps.gsa.staticplugins.opa.OpaActivity");
startActivity(launchIntent);
Although this doesn't throw an ActivityNotFoundException, it does throw a Permission Denial. This is shown to happen because Google Assistant must be launched from the googlequicksearchbox package from above. Hopefully this will change when/if they release an API for it. Fingers crossed.