Evaluating Peripheral Visual and Haptic Feedback Modalities for Cross-Regional Target Search

Abstract

Guiding user attention across multiple spatial regions is essential for safety-critical activities such as driving and cycling. While peripheral visual cues can redirect attention without disrupting central vision, their effectiveness may diminish under high visual workload or when targets fall outside the field of view. Haptic feedback offers an alternative channel that operates independently of visual demands. This study systematically compares three feedback conditions in a multi-region target search task using a head-mounted display: Ambient Display, Haptic Display, and Ambient-Haptic Display. Results show that haptic feedback significantly outperformed peripheral visual cues for rear visual area search. While the multimodal combination did not further improve objective performance over haptic feedback alone, it lowered perceived mental and physical demand relative to peripheral visual cues and was rated highly by participants. These findings demonstrate that haptic feedback provides superior attention guidance for targets outside the current field of view. Our work offers practical guidance for designing cross-modal assistive systems in safety-critical environments.