OTTUMWA, Iowa — Baseball has the pitching machine. Tennis has automated ball shooters. Now, basketball may have its revolutionary device to help players hone their game.

Ottumwa native Jim Langland co-owns a company that makes sewing machines for quilt makers. A few years ago, he and his co-owners began developing a concept for a new product. “Now we’re throwing basketballs,” he said.

Langland was demonstrating the machine on the campus of Indian Hills Community College recently. A crew was photographing and taking video of the machine, which resembles a small automated teller machine.

The new product is packed with ideas. But what makes the unit different from automatic tennis ball shooters and batting cage pitching machines is its ability to track a player.

“It locks in on the color of your shirt,” Langland said. “Then it follows you. When you stop and throw the ball, it throws you another ball.”

You can then dribble, move and shoot again. Dederick Lee, an Indian Hills basketball player, was being filmed by the video crew. He’d dribble and move, and the machine remained silent. But it was tracking him, so when he took a shot, it tossed another ball to his position on the court while he launched himself into motion again.

Langland’s company, APQS, now has the first in its line of smart robot pitchers, the Hot Shot. The overall sports arm of the company will be known as Ballistech.

“Ballistic was already taken,” said Langland. “So we had to use ‘tech.’”

Like the sewing machines, the basketball machines will be manufactured at the company’s factory located in Carroll, about . But there may not be enough room. Langland says the company’s operations may expand to Ottumwa if necessary.

He’s from Ottumwa, as are some of his partners in the company, with at least one of them graduating from Indian Hills.

“It’s fitting that this round of tests is conducted on the court at Indian Hills Community College,” Langland said.

Barret Peery, the Indian Hills head men’s basketball coach, spent a year advising Langland and his team on features the machine should have and how they should be incorporated into the design.

Peery, now on staff at Santa Clara University, must have liked the way the basketball machine turned out.

“He’s already ordered two,” Langland said. 

Newman writes for the Ottumwa, Iowa Courier.