Make One Object "Carry" Another

I have a Synfig animated robot that can move left and right, raise and lower its arm, and open and close a claw. I want to have the robot pick up an object, an imported PNG, and move it to a new location in the frame. The motion is to both raise the robot arm and move to the right. I am unable to make the PNG image stay in sync with the robot’s claw.

Is there a way to “attach” one object to another so that both follow the same path, then “detach” later? (I’ve experimented with grouping, but I appear to be unable to “ungroup” at the end of the motion time, when the robot should “put down” the object.)

If there’s a tutorial that addresses this. a pointer would be most helpful.

Hi!
And welcome to the forum.
There are several ways to do what you want and I could start about linking and export values, but the easiest way I use to pick up an object is to duplicate it. So you get the object and a duplicate of the object that is already attached to the hand. Then it is just a matter of setting the amount or visibility to show what you want. I attached a sifz file to demonstrate this with a hand picking up a cup from a table. Just don’t mind the art.
Greetz!

pickup.sifz (11.1 KB)

Wow! Thank you very much!