(Help) Pick up item animates to point and becomes a platform

Hey Everyone!

I am trying to script a interesting game design element into a game I am working on. It's rather simple really. I would like my player to touch and activate an item in the environment. When activated, that item will animate to designated point so the player can jump/walk on it to progress forward.

Here is a basic idea:

however I would like for it to be a little more dynamic then the way I explained. I would also like to implement different things like the item following and hover around the player unity it reaches the point where it needs to fill the space that the player needs to move forward. Also the environment wont be the same the entire way so the pick up object may need to animate to a different points so I can make the same animation.

I am asking for away to proceed forward. could anyone give me a hint or tip on how I should approach this in Unity?

(background) I am a fulltime Graphic artist/programmer and I've been working in unity for a few years now and I'm very familiar with Java and C++ (a little).

Thank you for your time and sorry for the lengthy explanation and horrible drawing. if you need more clarification simply ask and ill do better to explain the idea.