Can you gradually slow an fbx animation on raycast hit, then speed it up again after a certain amount of time?

Hi all,

Not sure how well i have explained this, but hopefully someone out there will understand what i want to do..

I have a series of path animations baked into an fbx file that i would like to gradually slow down using a raycast that shoots a ray forward, checks the tag on the gameobject then slows the animation state speed if the tag on the gameobject is marked "pod". I have some javascript working for this so far, but i would like it to gradually slow the animation whereas at the moment it slows it instantly. Once it has slowed for a period of time, lets say 5 seconds, i would then like it to speed up again until the next raycast hit is called.

This is the code i have so far:

 #pragma strict
 
 function Update () {
     var hit : RaycastHit;
     if (Physics.Raycast(transform.position, transform.forward, hit, 10.0 ))
         {
             if(hit.collider.tag == "Pods")
             {
                 for (var state : AnimationState in GetComponent.<Animation>())
                 state.speed = 0.05;
                 print (hit.collider.tag);
                 Debug.DrawLine (transform.position, hit.collider.transform.position,Color.red);
             }
         }
 }

Also i have noticed that the frame rate drops dramatically when there are a lot of raycast hits. I think this casts a ray every frame? Should/could i cast the ray in a different way to get less of an impact on frame rate? Or am i tackling this in completely the wrong way?

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Many thanks,

Paul