The helicopter is now venturing out on its own. I know the helicopter has a radio link back to the Perseverance rover so it can relay back telemetry and pictures. I wonder just how far off the helicopter can “wander” and still be “heard” by the rover?
Just a guess, but perhaps the helicopter is programmed to make its way back to its last landing spot if it loses contact with Perseverance. It has a fairly high degree of navigational autonomy, and can make use or landmarks it observes with its down-looking cameras.
Not to mention the possibility that Perseverance can go off looking for it if necessary.
I imagine they are going to use the helicopter to scout out the path ahead of Perseverance. Curiosity could have made better time if they had been able to look ahead a ways, instead of having to wait for the rover to cover its path forward. Also they got a significant amount of wheel damage on Curiosity because they tried to speed it up and it ran over rough ground between the point they were at and the point to which they commanded it to go.
I suspect the cost and weight of the Ingenuity helicopter was balanced against the amount of distance they can cover over the course of a mission (determined ultimately by the lifetime of the radioisotope heat source in the rover's RTG supply).
Ingenuity is a way to leverage other scarce resources like RTG life and wear on the rover parts by scouting out several alternative paths ahead before committing to a long-distance trek.