The fundamental research for the mobile robot navigation using the numerical optimization method is presented. We define the mobile robot navigation problem as an unconstrained optimization problem to minimize the cost function with the pose error between the goal position and the position of a mobile robot. Using the nonlinear least squares optimization method, the optimal speeds of the left and right wheels can be found as the solution of the optimization problem. Especially, the rotational speed of wheels of a mobile robot can be directly related to the overall speed of a mobile robot using the Jacobian derived from the kinematic model. It will be very useful for applying to the mobile robot navigation. The performance was evaluated using the simulation.