This paper proposes the path planning and tracking methods for a nonholonomic mobile robot, which is based on the pure pursuit and the generalized Voronoi diagram (GVD) methods. The proposed methods can solve motion tracking problem of the real nonholonomic mobile robot under determining vector length to get the direction of motion based on pure pursuit, the reference velocity and the angular velocity. Another important point is fully considered the initial direction of the robot instead of considering the robot as a directionless point. However, some assumptions are given to make the calculation processes more easy and simple. We can use those methods to direct the robot to explore the unknown environment. The simulation results are presented to verify the performance of proposed methods for the nonholonomic mobile robot. However, this approach is worth drawing on the experience of any other mobile robots.