Josh Te Rauna and his invention, Perfect Shot, an augmented reality headset that helps people with their basketball shooting. Warwick Smith / Stuff
By George Heagney, Stuff
A Manawatū man has come up with an invention he believes will help basketball players master the perfect shot.
Josh Te Rauna has invented an augmented reality device called Perfect Shot to help with the vital skill of shooting for the basket.
He got the idea after watching NBA star Stephen Curry and after starting with a prototype made from a broom handle and a hula hoop, he now has an electronic headset.
The headset provides instructions for the player to shoot the ball, but details about the instructions can’t be revealed. The product had a provisional patent, but Te Rauna was trying to raise money to cover the full patent while they were in the final phase of going to market and to cover marketing costs.
Te Rauna said when an athlete shoots the ball as instructed, they will get it in the basket every time. It will work for all athletes no matter their size or ability.
The device develops the muscle memory for shooting. Players can see where they’re going to shoot and it teaches them to build the optimal trajectory.
Te Rauna testing out the Perfect Shot prototype. Source / Stuff
The seed was planted for Te Rauna when watching Curry shoot the lights out during the 2016 NBA playoffs.
“A year after this game I had a dream or vision brought to me in my sleep,” Te Rauna said. “I woke up, and I just knew this was the point I had to start this journey on.”
He watched his son’s basketball shots, some were missing at the front of the rim, and remembered Curry’s success was due to his high shooting arc.
Te Rauna bought a hula hoop and broom stick, connected them together and got his son to shoot through it into a rubbish bin.
Josh Te Rauna’s son tries out the headset. Source / Stuff
He then had to develop the technology so went around knocking on doors asking for support, then went to Idea Development in Feilding.
The second prototype was an app on a phone with a virtual reality helmet. Te Rauna went door knocking again, established the business in 2018, then gained the interest of Dr Gabe Redding at Massey University.
Redding initially thought it was a good project for a master’s or PhD student to work on, but there weren’t any available, so he agreed to work on it.
“The first Covid lockdown turned out to be a blessing,” Te Rauna said. “He got it 80% completed, then in the second lockdown he finished it.”
Te Ruana said they were going to market depending on finance.
He said if they could improve the ability of the worst-performing shooters on a team, it would be a “gold mine”.
“It came down to creating the perfect shot for somebody. Perfect practice makes perfect play.”
The technology could also work for netball and the corn hole game, where people throw bags through a hole in a board.
Josh Te Rauna wearing the Perfect Shot headset. Warwick Smith / Stuff
Te Rauna said it had been a long process, a roller coaster, that took a toll on his mental health.
“My childhood started off not so great. This is an opportunity to give back for what I’ve done in life, to be able to provide something for the youth.”
He said when he was younger he dreamed of being an All Black, but never connected at school and was “on a pathway in being in youth jail at an early age, I was being a menace to society”.
But the birth of his first child got him on the straight and narrow. Now the father-of-three aged 5, 11, and 14, wanted to help people.
Te Rauna said New Zealand basketball great Kenny McFadden had been a supporter of the device before he died and had believed it would become the way children would learn to shoot.
Te Rauna was seeking further financial backing in his pursuit of a patent.