As a result of the mining industry moving towards more mechanized mining methods, the number of LHD vehicles used in underground mines has increased to a great extent. The growth of mechanization over the last three decades has benefited both workers and the mining companies, however, due to the design constraints for LHD vehicles and the mining environment, restricted visibility for operators has resulted. The inability of the mobile equipment operator to see clearly (i.e. people, objects or hazards) around the machine has contributed to a number of accidents including fatal injuries.

In order to identify vehicle design characteristics resulting in restricted and blocked operator sightlines, visibility assessments for existing machines are traditionally completed in the field using a light filament technique. Past researchers have used the light filament technique to collect obscuration zones around the equipment and to produce a 2D chart of this information. The 2D shadow diagrams have proved to be useful in highlighting potential equipment problems and have been performed repeatedly to show the result of redesigning a piece of equipment. The light filament method involves manually collecting data and therefore requires a level of personal judgment to be used. As a result the method is susceptible to errors and requires around three hours to complete. Repeat tests have been performed with the light filament method which has enabled a quantification of the typical errors obtained.

The results of this thesis indicate that laser scanners can be successfully used to rapidly collect line of sight data for LHD vehicles with high accuracy. The accuracy of the repeat tests for the method using laser scanners are 96% against 94 % for the method using a manual light filament. The theoretical and practical framework presented in the thesis gives a sound basis to the researchers towards evolution of a new method of visibility testing for mobile mining machinery.