A semi-automatic three-dimensional light detection and ranging (LIDAR) point cloud data annotation system and method for autonomous driving of a vehicle involve filtering 3D LIDAR point cloud and normalizing the filtered 3D LIDAR point cloud data relative to the vehicle to obtain normalized 3D LIDAR point cloud data, quantizing the normalized 3D LIDAR point cloud data by dividing it into a set of 3D voxels, projecting the set of 3D voxels to a 2D birdview, identifying a possible object by applying clustering to the 2D birdview projection, obtaining an annotated 2D birdview projection including annotations by a human annotator via the annotation system regarding whether the bounding box corresponds to a confirmed object and a type of the confirmed object, and converting the annotated 2D birdview projection to back into annotated 3D LIDAR point cloud data.