Systems and methods for motion attribute recognition are defined using data stream pre-processing to orient, align and segment motion data before using non-parametric classification recognition to search a motion data exemplar database or using parametric classification recognition to find attributes by comparing pre-processed motion data with support vector machines. Results from the non-parametric classification recognition and the parametric classification recognition may be fused to produce a single result. Active learning and metric learning are used to improve searches of the database and comparisons to the support vector machines.