The invention provides an outer rotor axial magnetic circuit reluctance type rotary transformer with multiple pairs of poles for a space manipulator. An equivalent air gap is arranged between a stator and a rotor; and a wavy magnetic conduction material is arranged at the middle part of the rotor, P wave crests and P wave troughs are distributed on the magnetic conduction material along the circumferential direction of the rotor, non-magnetic conduction materials are arranged at the two end parts of the rotor, 4NP tooth grooves are axially formed on the outer surface of the stator, a through groove is formed in the circumferential direction, 4NP pairs of upper teeth and lower teeth are further formed on the outer surface of the stator, every adjacent N upper teeth and the corresponding N lower teeth sequentially form one group of winding teeth, and the outer rotor axial magnetic circuit reluctance type rotary transformer has 4P groups of the winding teeth in total. According to the outer rotor axial magnetic circuit reluctance type rotary transformer provided by the invention, the wavy magnetic conduction material and the vertical winding way of an excitation winding and signal windings are adopted, thus induced electromotive force of the two phases of the signal windings can change according sine and cosine laws, and a constant component in an electromotive force waveform is weakened; and the axial magnetic circuit structure is adopted, thus the volume is reduced, and the load performance of the rotary transformer is also improved.