With regard to getting onto the left side shelf in the furnace room, we can't find any control button on our PS3 controller that will release the robot from the carrier and toss him onto the shelf.
I don't know about playing on a PS3 ~ nor with a touchpad ~ but I just ran through the furnace room level on my PC to see how the interface with the "platform jump" works.
After Josef was pulled up by the clamp I had to position my mouse pointer right ON him to make the "left arrow" appear... clicked and he made the leap.
Hope this helps both Flobster and you, Zeugitai.