The walkthrough is no help when it comes to working out how to get the robot to walk fast enough to catch the grabber.
Unfortunately, the walkthrough is misleading when it shows Josef RUNNING to get to the coal trolley. That's completely WRONG! In fact, at no point in this game does Josef
ever run.
No, once you have the three levers set correctly ( and, as you discovered, you then shrink yourself back to
normal size ) you then point Josef to the coal trolley so he walks over to it, and you then make him jump in and the claw will come down to pick him up.
From there it's a matter of exact timing to get Josef to jump away from the claw and over to the platform. ( it might take a few tries... "no one ever makes the first jump")
that was a quote from the movie The Matrix
I wonder why no one explained this simple solution to the other new players like myself who posted a request for help with this tricky bit.
We already have.
The answer was in this topic:
Furnace: Can't jump in the car early enough Also, it might help you to watch this YouTube video walkthrough of that level:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlWk5z6rheU