Ubuntu keeps a symbol links for current vmlinuz and initrd.img, at /, but what's the point of doing so? And given that many people have their /boot on a different partition.
SnapOverflow
This is for certain scripts that update (boot related actions) so they will automatically go for the newer upgraded kernel rather than the old kernel if the kernel was upgraded.
The files and the (symlinks) are needed for modules contained in the kernel during the boot process.
If you remove one or both vmlinuz and initrd.img the system you may need to re-run your boot loader [grub] because grub relies on the symlinks to continue its next process> Uncompressing Linux... Ok, booting the kernel.
To get an Idea of how the system works look here: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-linuxboot/index.html
You can use other boot loaders without needing to use their search scripts.
Like network boot pxe syslinux. You just need to aim kernel to /vmlinuz and initrd to /initrd.img and no matter how many times you update the kernel, it will still boot.